Leave And Attendance

Leave and Attendance manage time away, attendance capture, rosters, shifts, overtime, and leave balances. These records can affect payroll, workforce planning, approvals, and employee performance review.

The operational areas are divided across three capabilities: HR Leave and Absence owns leave types, requests, balances, and absence treatment; HR Time and Attendance owns attendance records, rules, and overtime; and HR Scheduling and Coverage owns shifts, rosters, availability, and coverage exceptions. A service can enable one without enabling the others. A visible workspace or a user's permission does not imply that every tab or related API is available. See Capabilities and Access.

Workspace Reference

Workspace	How Users Reach It	Main Actions
Leave And Attendance Setup	HR -> Setup -> Time and Attendance Setup	Configure Leave Types, Shifts, and Attendance Rules before operational capture starts.
Time And Attendance	HR -> Operations -> Time And Attendance	Manage leave requests, balances, attendance, rosters, shifts, and overtime records.
Employee Management	HR -> Operations -> Employee Management	Review employee-specific leave balances, active leave requests, and approval actions from the employee detail.

Setup Dependencies

Before users record leave or attendance, administrators should configure:

• Leave types.
• Shifts.
• Attendance rules.
• Working calendars and holidays where applicable.
• Approval behavior for leave and overtime.

If setup is incomplete, users may not be able to select the correct leave type, shift, or rule.

Leave Types

Leave types define the categories of leave available to employees, such as annual leave, sick leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, compassionate leave, study leave, unpaid leave, or organisation-specific types.

Important leave-type considerations include:

• Whether the leave type is paid or unpaid.
• Whether balances are tracked.
• Whether approval is required.
• Whether the leave can be carried forward.
• Whether attachments or reasons are expected.

The current setup form also exposes category, default days, accrual method (annual, monthly or none), carry-over allowance and maximum carry-over days, minimum notice days, maximum consecutive days, gender restriction and a description. Choose values from the tenant's approved policy. A form default is not legal advice and should not be mistaken for the applicable statutory entitlement. Avoid changing an existing type in a way that retroactively changes the interpretation of already recorded requests or balances.

Leave Requests

A leave request normally captures:

• Employee.
• Leave type.
• Start date and end date.
• Reason or handover notes.
• Approval status.

Managers should review the requested dates, leave balance, workload impact, and handover before approving.

Process a request

1. Confirm the employee is active/eligible and select the approved leave type.
2. Enter start and end dates, using the half-day flag and morning/afternoon period when applicable. Provide the reason and requested attachment where the leave type requires evidence.
3. Select a coverage/relief employee when the operating process requires one. This creates a coverage/handover responsibility; it does not transfer the employee's job or reporting line.
4. Submit for review. The table separates request status from approval status; inspect both before deciding what can happen next.
5. The reviewer confirms dates and computed days, policy/notice/evidence, balance, conflicts and coverage. Approve or reject through the row action; rejection requires a reason. Do not approve a request merely to clear the queue.
6. Reopen the record and verify the decision, dates, days and any resulting balance/ledger movement. If a decision was wrong, use the supported cancel or correction path and preserve the audit trail rather than creating a duplicate.

The employee self-service request path is scoped to the signed-in employee and uses its own create permission. The HR administrator path selects an employee from the approved employee lookup and uses the general leave-request permissions. These are different authorization paths into the same leave business process.

Operational Field Implications

Field Or Area	Meaning	User Impact
Employee	Person requesting leave, attendance correction, roster assignment, or overtime.	Drives balance checks, payroll impact, manager review, and reporting.
Leave Type	Category of absence being requested.	Determines paid or unpaid treatment, balance usage, evidence needs, and approval behavior.
Start Date And End Date	Leave period requested.	Affects leave-day calculation, roster coverage, payroll, and availability.
Shift	Expected working pattern.	Used to interpret attendance, lateness, absence, overtime, and roster planning.
Attendance Rule	Classification and calculation rule for time records.	Controls late, absent, overtime, manual edit, and rounding behavior.
Overtime Hours	Extra time requested or approved.	Can become payable only when policy and approval allow it.
Reason Or Handover Notes	Explanation for absence or extra work.	Helps managers assess operational impact and audit evidence.

Leave Balances

Leave balances show entitlement, used days, pending days, and available balance by leave type and period. A pending leave request may reduce the effective availability even before it is finally approved.

If a balance looks wrong, check the leave type setup, employee eligibility, period, previous approvals, and any manual balance adjustment.

Accrual, carry-forward, encashment, and manual adjustments are policy-controlled operations, not values to repair by directly editing a displayed balance. Review the source transaction and approval/audit history before correcting a discrepancy. A leave request and an observed absence are separate facts; do not infer that one automatically creates or approves the other.

Accrual, adjustment and control views

The Leave Balances table exposes employee, employee number, leave type, fiscal year, entitled days, taken days, carried-over days, adjustments and remaining balance. Authorized users can run an accrual or record an adjustment. An adjustment requires a signed day delta (negative to subtract) and a reason; an accrual action selects its fiscal period/year. These are privileged balance operations—run them only after confirming the relevant policy, employee population and period, and then inspect the ledger.

The Leave Controls area has four distinct read/decision views:

View	What it is for	Fields to reconcile
Accrual ledger	Chronological balance movements, such as entitlement, accrual, carry-over, adjustment, leave taken/reversed and expiry.	Entry date/type, day delta, source record and reason.
Balance reconciliation	Compare the displayed/cache balance with the value derived from ledger entries.	Fiscal year, displayed balance, ledger balance, delta and reconciliation status.
Leave forecast	Project the balance using current balance, expected future accrual and scheduled leave.	Current balance, expected remaining accrual, scheduled leave and projected year-end value.
Return to work	Record planned and actual return after approved leave.	Leave end, planned/actual return, status and evidence/notes as requested by the form.

Forecast is a projection, not a new accrual entry. Reconciliation identifies a difference; it should not be "fixed" by adjusting the balance until the underlying ledger/source mismatch is understood. Return-to-work states include Planned, Returned, Early, Late and Cancelled; a return record does not itself change the employee's employment status.

Attendance

Attendance records capture whether an employee was present, absent, late, working a half day, or otherwise recorded under the configured attendance rules. Attendance can be entered manually or through the operating process used by the tenant.

Attendance information can affect payroll, overtime, discipline, performance, and operational capacity.

Capture, correct and decide attendance

The capture form records employee, shift, work date, clock-in/out times, a status override when justified, and notes. The review table shows employee, date, clock facts, hours, overtime, shift, source, attendance status and approval status. Current status choices include Present, Absent, Late, Half Day, On Leave and Holiday; approval state is separately Pending Approval, Approved or Rejected.

1. Select the correct employee/date/shift and record the actual clock facts.
2. Use a status override only when the observed facts and attendance rule support it; record the explanation in notes.
3. Review calculated hours/status and submit for the required decision.
4. An authorized reviewer confirms the record or rejects it with a reason.
5. Re-read the row and any summary after the action. Corrected own-attendance records use the dedicated employee correction request path rather than editing another employee's event.

The Convert to unpaid leave action is an explicit reconciliation path from an absence record to a configured unpaid leave type. It requires the selected unpaid leave type and a conversion reason. It is not automatic, does not turn every absent status into leave, and should not be used for an employee who had approved paid leave or a different documented reason.

Rosters And Shifts

Rosters assign employees to planned shifts. Shifts define expected working time. Use rosters when the organisation needs to plan staffing by day, site, team, or service.

Review roster conflicts before relying on attendance or overtime results.

Create and publish a roster

1. Create a roster with a name and period start/end dates.
2. Assign each employee to a roster date, shift, or off day, with notes where needed. Confirm the employee's position/skills and service scope.
3. Review the employee count and roster interval; resolve duplicate, overlapping, leave and availability conflicts.
4. Publish only after the schedule is ready for use. The UI exposes separate create, assignment/update and publish permissions. A published roster is a plan, not an attendance event or proof of worked hours.

Employees can also have dated availability entries (Available, Unavailable, On Call or Preferred) with optional time windows and reason. Availability is planning evidence; it does not replace leave approval or guarantee assignment.

Shift coverage and exceptions

Coverage requirements connect a roster, shift and date to required/minimum headcount, required skills and minimum rest hours. The coverage view compares required, assigned, eligible, rest-safe and available headcount and reports policy/coverage health plus open exception count. A scan evaluates these records and can identify coverage gaps, overstaffing, fatigue, skill mismatch, availability conflicts or leave conflicts.

Exceptions move through Open, Acknowledged, Resolved or Waived states. The authorized owner records a decision and resolution note. Acknowledging means the exception is seen, not solved; waiving records an authorized exception to the requirement and should carry a reason; resolving should reflect a real coverage or policy correction. Keep the underlying roster and leave records consistent with the resolution.

Overtime

Overtime requests capture the employee, date, hours, reason, and approval outcome. Approval can confirm the hours as requested or adjust actual approved hours.

Only approved overtime should be treated as payable where payroll policy requires approval.

Approval records authorization of the hours; it is not itself a payroll run or payment. Payroll uses the configured source-input policy and the approved effective records for its period. Confirm inclusion and reconciliation in the payroll run rather than assuming every attendance or overtime row was consumed.

The overtime request form captures employee, overtime date, planned hours and reason. An authorized approver reviews the request and records actual approved hours, or rejects it with a reason. Planned hours and approved actual hours are separate quantities. Retain the approved hours and source date, then verify whether the payroll input policy includes them in the relevant period.

Worked examples

Leave with handover and coverage

An employee requests annual leave for five scheduled working days and names a relief colleague. The manager checks entitlement, dates, notice, evidence and workload, then approves or rejects the request. If approved, the handover owner accepts or declines the coverage responsibility. Scheduling checks the roster for a coverage gap; if a gap exists, the manager changes the roster or records an explicit resolution. The request, handover and roster each retain their own status. Payroll should consume only eligible approved leave input configured for the relevant period.

Absence conversion

If attendance shows an unexcused absence and the policy requires unpaid leave, an authorized operator selects an active configured unpaid leave type, supplies the conversion reason and uses the conversion action. They then check the attendance row, leave request/balance and later payroll run. If the event was actually an approved leave or holiday, conversion would be incorrect and must not be used just to create a deduction.

Leave balance discrepancy

If the displayed balance is 12 days but the ledger-derived amount is 10, first inspect the fiscal year and leave type, then list ledger entries and compare entitlement, accrual, carry-over, approved leave taken/reversed, adjustment and expiry movements to the displayed cache. Correct the source or use the authorized adjustment with a reason only after identifying the legitimate 2-day difference. Re-run the reconciliation and verify a zero delta (or a documented exception); don't overwrite the table balance directly.

Common Mistakes

• Approving leave without checking available balance.
• Recording attendance against the wrong date or shift.
• Creating overtime without approval where payroll requires it.
• Forgetting that holidays and weekends can affect leave-day calculations.
• Treating pending leave as final approved absence.

Good Practice

Review leave, attendance, rosters, and overtime before payroll processing. Make corrections while the period is still open so payroll and reports use accurate time data.

Related Guides

• Capabilities and Access
• HR Setup
• Employee Lifecycle and Manager Workspaces
• Payroll
• Benefits and Total Rewards
• Employee Self-Service
• Worked HR Scenarios