🔒 Absence Management (Beta) is available on our Starter, Essentials and Premium packages. To learn more about pricing, click here.
Absence Management (Beta) is designed to help you manage staff absence and holiday entitlements. This optional new feature replaces the old leave system while preserving all existing leave records. The new system offers enhanced functionality and flexibility, making absence management more efficient and improving clarity across your staff records.
What Can You Do With Absence Management (Beta)
Clearer Tracking of Holiday Entitlements
Easily view the total holiday entitlement for each staff member, as well as how much has been used and how much is still available. This feature provides a clear, up-to-date picture of leave balances.
Customisable Absence Duration
With Absence Management (Beta), you can log absences for full days, half days, or even custom durations down to the minute. This ensures that leave is tracked accurately, whether it's a few hours or a full day.
Automatic Shift Reassignments
When an absence is confirmed, shifts that overlap with the absence are automatically unassigned. This allows for quicker identification of staffing gaps and ensures that your schedules are always up to date.
Easy Edits and Adjustments
Edits and adjustments to existing leave entries can be made quickly and easily, saving time and ensuring records are accurate.
Customise Absence Types
You can fully customise absence types (e.g., paid vs unpaid), add subtypes, and configure approval workflows.
How to Enable Absence Management (Beta)
Absence management (Beta) is an optional feature that can be enabled from your Settings page. Follow these steps to get started:
Go to Settings in your sidebar → and click on Playground
Click on Opt in in the Staffing → Absence management section
💡 After enabling, all leave will be displayed in hours and minutes, based on system settings, and you will have the ability to make edits as needed
Important things to note when enabling Absence management (beta):
All current staff leave settings (such as staff leave approval, and leave date ranges, for example) will apply to Absence management (Beta)
If you decide not to continue with Absence management (Beta), you can disable it at any time from your Settings
Changes made during the Beta period will apply to the original system if it is disabled, so be mindful of adjustments
If you have any absence categories set as "Paid" in your settings, these categories won't be supported by the previous leave system and will be counted as "Unpaid", so be sure to use subtypes with a "Paid" status
💜 If you have any suggestions or feedback, you can provide them via the form on the staff leave page
Settings & Configurations for Staff Absence Management
Absence management (Beta) offers several new settings and configuration options for leave to help you tailor the system to your needs. You can adjust your Absence management settings by clicking on Settings → Staff → Absence management:
Your Absence management settings include:
Full Day Absence (Default)
You can set a default full-day absence value for your site in your Settings, which is used as a starting point for calculating total absence hours.
This value will be applied automatically, but you can also adjust it for each staff member through their profile. To adjust per staff member:
Navigate to their staff profile
Scroll down to the About section
Next, click on Contract and amend their individual Full day absence default value here
🔒 The Staff management - Edit permission is required to make changes here
Holiday Entitlement (Default)
Set a default annual holiday entitlement for each staff member. This value is automatically used when calculating holiday balances.
Just like with full day absence, this entitlement can be adjusted at the staff level on each staff member's profile by:
Scrolling down to the About section
Next, click on Contract and amend their individual Holiday entitlement value here
The system multiplies the number of days by the full day absence value to determine the total number of hours of holiday entitlement per year
The total entitlement, as well as the remaining and taken time, is displayed within the absence modal and on staff profiles
💡 The year range for holiday entitlement is determined by the Absence date range set in your Absence management settings
Absence Approval
You can choose which absence types need to be approved by a manager before they are saved. If no approval is required, absences will be added directly without review. To configure which types of absences require approval:
Head to Settings in your sidebar
Click on Absence management
Scroll down to Absence approval and check or uncheck the absence types you'd like to require approval for
☝️ With Absence management (Beta), managers will have more context when reviewing requests. The manager view shows which staff are away at the same time and highlights any overlapping shifts, which will be unassigned once the absence is confirmed
Absence Types
Absence types such as Holiday, Sickness, and Child sick can be classified as paid or unpaid in your Absence types settings under Absence management. You can also add custom subtypes for each absence type and set the paid/unpaid status for each one.
Absence added with a "Paid" type or subtype is calculated against holiday entitlement totals. Only paid absence will appear in the weekly summary of total hours worked, which is shown at the bottom of staff timesheets.
💡"Unpaid" holiday is still tracked on the system for awareness and availability
Optional Absence Configurations
Additional settings are available to give you more control over how leave is recorded and managed:
Require Subtype for Leave: Enabling this setting ensures that a subtype must be selected for each leave entry before it can be approved or rejected.
Restrict Subtype Selection: If you enable this, only users with the Staff leave - edit permission will be able to add or modify subtypes.
How to Add Staff Absence
Absence Management (Beta) introduces several updates to simplify adding absence for staff. Every absence now includes a time value (hours/minutes), ensuring accurate records.
You can add absence entries from staff profiles, or the Staff absence, hours and attendance sections under Staffing in Attendance pages by clicking on Add absence
If you're adding absence from Staff absence, click on Add absence and enter the details of this absence into the modal:
Select Staff Member: The staff member’s entitlement information will be added automatically based on their profile settings
Choose Absence Type: Pick the type of absence (holiday, sickness, etc.) and add a custom subtype if applicable. In the summary, you'll be able to see if this absence is paid or Unpaid
Choose Dates: You can select a single date or a range of dates. If your site uses Weekend Support, absences will be added for the entire range, including weekends
Duration: You can choose between three options:
Full Day: This automatically calculates the total hours based on the staff member’s full day value
For example, if this is set at 8 hours, and 3 days of absence are selected, the total time will be 24 hours (8 hours x 3 days)
Half Day: This calculates half the staff’s full day value per day
For example, if a full day is 8 hours, and 3 half-days of absence are selected, the total time will be 12 hours (4 hours for each calendar day)
Custom: Enter any total hours/minutes for the absence, which is especially useful when the absence doesn’t follow standard full or half-day patterns.
For example, if you use the hours from a staff member's shifts to determine the absence duration, you can input the value shown in the right panel (e.g. Existing shifts (10h total)). You must select a starting time so that the system can determine other staff away and any existing shifts that may overlap
Add a Note: Include a note for any special details related to the absence. If you have Staff leave - edit permissions, you can also edit this note later
Click Save when you're ready
Expanded Absence Modal for Admins
For users with the Staff leave - edit permission, the absence modal provides additional information:
Staff Away at the Same Time: See which other staff members are away on the same date, helping to make informed decisions
Existing Shifts: If the staff member has overlapping shifts, they will be automatically unassigned when the absence is saved or approved. These shifts will show as open shifts - they don't count toward staff ratio calculations and can be easily reassigned to another staff member.
Where to Get an Overview of Staff Absence
The Staff absence page is your central hub for managing all absences. From here, you can view, edit, and approve/reject requests.
Overview Tab: View a list of all absences, and use the filters to narrow down your search. You can also export a CSV file of absence data.
From your Overview tab, staff members with the Staff leave - edit permission can also edit existing absence. To do so, open the absence entry or click the pencil icon to make changes to the type of leave, dates, or duration. If you delete a leave entry, the staff member will be notified.
Pending Tab: If you’ve set up absence approval, all pending requests will appear here. Staff members with the Staff leave - Approve/reject permission can approve or reject requests directly from this tab, and make edits if needed.
Notifications will appear when a new request for leave is made and when it's approved or rejected.
Absence Totals: This new feature provides an overview of all absence totals across your site, including paid and unpaid leave. You can filter data and export a CSV summary or a detailed report.
How to See a Summary of Absence on Staff Profiles
Each staff profile now includes a comprehensive absence summary. The total leave entitlement is shown in both hours and days (calculated from the Full Day Absence value).
🔒 Staff can view their own leave history, but only staff members with the Staff leave - edit permission can make edits or deletions.
Share Your Feedback
Thank you for testing Absence Management (Beta)! Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions via the feedback form on the staff leave page.
After the Beta period, Absence Management will become the default system and updates and notifications will keep you informed throughout the transition.
We appreciate your support as you explore the new system!