My Absence hours don't match. Why?

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The timesheet's primary purpose is to record and document employees' clocking actions and their worked time, including breaks and sometimes absences. But what if the numbers in the timesheet don't reflect what you expected?

In this article, we discuss settings that can impact your Absence column and show you examples that might apply to you.

Here are the reasons in short (follow the link for examples and more details):

1. Breaks: Breaks can be prescheduled and decrease the absence time since breaks do not require an absence, to begin with.
2. Unscheduled Days: If a part of a series of full-day absences includes days without a schedule, the unscheduled days won't show any absence time.
3. Unscheduled Absences: If an employee is absent from work or an absence was not scheduled, the timesheet won't show any absence time either.

Reason #1 – Breaks

Breaks can be pre-planned at fixed times within a schedule. As break time is not considered actual work time per se, absences planned over breaks won't be counted as actual absence time. 

Note: This rule doesn't apply to Conditionally Deducted Breaks, as these breaks aren't scheduled at specific times and only apply if a certain number of consecutively worked hours is reached!

Example:

An employee has a schedule from 08:00-17:00 with a scheduled lunch break between 12:00-13:00. The employee gets sick during lunch and goes home at 12:30. Their manager plans the absence from 12:30-17:00. 

With an absence between these hours, one might expect 04:30 hours of absence in the timesheet. However, upon further inspection, the absence column only shows 4:00 hours of absence.

This is due to the fact that 30 minutes of that absence lie within a scheduled break. With an absence between 12:30 and 17:00 and 30 minutes of break time left, the absence finally amounts to exactly 4:00 hours.

Tip: If an employee leaves during a break, make sure that the last Clock out action is adjusted to the beginning of the break, especially if the break is automatically deducted. Since any clock out during an automatic break will result in the cancellation of the break, this could lead to incorrect worked hours.

Find out more about break types and how they work, how to set up the settings you prefer and different combinations of schedule and break types in this article:

Break Types

Reason #2 – Unscheduled Days

If a part of a series of full-day absences contain unscheduled days, these "empty" days won't count as absences in the report. As the employee was never supposed to work on these days, they won't have to excuse themselves from work.

Example:

An employee works under a schedule at fixed times from Mo-Fr. The manager plans four full days of absence between Friday and Monday. 

On the timesheet, only two full days of absence appear.

Since both Saturday and Sunday are not part of the employee's schedule, the absence planned over 4 days skips these two days resulting in 2 full days of absence.

Tip: Find out more about schedules, how to match them with your working conditions, and how to implement and assign them in this article:

The Schedules Page

Reason #3 – Unscheduled Absences

Unscheduled absences (when the employee doesn't show up) won't automatically count in the absence columns since the absence column is there to show scheduled absences. If you want to see absence values that shouldn't count towards the balance column, we recommend planning an unpaid absence.

Example:

An employee called in sick, and their manager scheduled a sick day on the calendar. When checking their timesheet later, the employee finds out that the absence column doesn't show any hours of absence.

After checking with their boss, they discovered the manager accidentally planned the sick day for the week after. This led to the actual sick day being an unscheduled absence, which didn't show in the absence column and resulted in a negative balance altogether. A quick correction resolved the issue.

Tip: Find out more about the Calendar and how the planning works in this article: 

The Calendar

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