Once your Global Admin has connected your HR system to Kadence, new starters, leavers, and leave data will start flowing into your everyday Kadence views. This guide covers everything Global Admins, Building Admins, and Coordinators need to know.

Permissions at a glance

	Global Admin	Building Admin	Coordinator	Team Manager	Employee
See pending new starters in the directory	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Book on behalf of a pending new starter	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
See employment status flag on existing users	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No

See pending new starters in the directory

New starters appear in the Directory as soon as your HR system marks them as pending — typically weeks before they actually start. They're flagged with a 'new starter clock' icon in the directory so you can spot them at a glance.

You can filter the directory by Employment status to see only pending, active, or inactive users, or people currently on leave (such as paternity leave).

If you're using Move Manager, your new starters will appear in your queue ready to be assigned a seat.

Book on behalf of a new starter

Pending users behave like any other Kadence user, so you can use existing booking flows to get them set up before day one.

Click New Booking and select the new starter.
Pick a desk, a room, or any other resource as you would for an active employee.
Confirm the booking — they're all set for their first day.

Their welcome email and login are held back until their start date passes and their status flips to active — no risk of credentials going out too early.

Handle pending users who don't end up joining

If a new starter's offer is withdrawn before they start, their HR record will be marked inactive. After the grace period, Kadence automatically tidies up:

Any desk assigned to them is released.
Any bookings made on their behalf are canceled.
Their record is set to inactive (we keep it for audit, not deleted).

You don't need to do anything — the cleanup runs in the background.

How HR data and Active Directory work together

A pending user from your HR system is a real Kadence user from the moment they're synced. But they're not quite like everyone else — here's what that means in practice.

Who can see pending users:

Global Admins, Building Admins, and Coordinators can see them in the Directory and the move management queue.
Team Managers and Employees can't see them. Pending users only become visible to colleagues once they're active.

What you can do with a pending user:

View their profile — start date, job title, building, employment status, and anything else synced from your HR system.
Book a desk, room, or other resource on their behalf, ready for day one.

What a pending user can't do:

Log in. Pending users don't have credentials and won't receive a welcome email until their start date passes and they're active.

When the user is also added to your authentication provider (AD/SSO):

Kadence matches the two records by email address so you don't end up with duplicates.

The HR-sourced record and the AD-sourced record become the same user. Their employment status, job title, building, and other HR-sourced fields stay in place, and they pick up the ability to log in once they're active.

If the email in your HR system doesn't match the email in AD, Kadence will create two separate records. These need to be merged manually — keeping email consistent between systems is the simplest way to avoid this.

When the user leaves:

When someone's removed from your authentication provider, they're deprovisioned from Kadence in the same way as any other user. Their bookings are canceled, desk ownerships are released, and their account is removed. This behavior is unchanged — HR integration doesn't override it.

Sync absence and leave data

When someone in your HR system has approved leave, their Kadence status updates automatically. Annual leave, sick days, paternity, maternity, jury duty, bereavement — it all comes through as not working in Kadence for the right dates and times.

Kadence doesn't store the type of leave, just that the person isn't working. This keeps sensitive HR data where it belongs: in your HR system. Kadence only knows when someone has approved leave — not why.

What happens automatically when leave is synced:

The employee's status updates to not working for the relevant dates.
Any desk bookings during that leave are canceled or trimmed to fit.
The employee gets an email letting them know their booking was changed and why.
Room bookings stay put — we don't want to cancel a meeting on behalf of everyone else attending.

Good to know

Bank holidays aren't synced unless your HR system records them as individual leave entries.
Past leave is backfilled for up to 12 months for reporting purposes. Past bookings are never canceled retrospectively.

FAQs

How quickly does new leave show up in Kadence?

For many providers, leave data is available near real-time. For providers who don't support this, leave data is synced overnight.

What happens to room bookings when someone is on leave?

Nothing — we don't touch room bookings. If a meeting needs canceling or reassigning, it will need to be handled manually.

Can I see why a colleague is off?

No. All leave types — vacation, sick, jury duty, volunteering, and others — show as Not working in Kadence. The reason stays private in your HR system.

Why hasn't a new starter appeared yet?

A few common reasons: their work location isn't mapped to a Kadence building, their HR record doesn't yet have a work location set, or they're not yet flagged as a pending employee in your HR system. Global Admins can use the unmapped-location report in HR Integration settings to spot these cases.

What's the difference between "on leave" and "leaving"?

On leave means someone is temporarily off — typically maternity, paternity, sabbatical, or long-term sick. They're still an active employee. They show up in the directory's on leave filter (when your HR system supports this status), and individual days of their leave show as not working on the Home page and colleague views.

Leaving means their employment is ending — a termination date is set in your HR system. Once that date passes, their record is flagged as inactive and they appear in the directory's inactive filter.

Both states are available as filters in the Directory so you can find people in either situation.

How does maternity or paternity leave show up?

It depends on your HR system. In most cases, long-term leave like maternity, paternity, sabbatical, and long-term sick will appear in two places: the directory's on leave filter (showing the person is currently on long-term leave), and the day-to-day not working status for each day of the leave (so colleagues see they're off when looking at the week).

A few HR systems don't pass through the on-leave status. For those, the leave only shows up as not working days — the directory filter won't reflect it.

Will the integration create duplicate accounts if a new starter's email is different in HR and AD?

Possibly. Kadence matches on email. If your HR system has a different email to your AD/SSO provider, you may end up with two records that need to be merged manually. Keeping email consistent between systems is the best way to avoid this.