Settings → Absence and leave → Absence types decides what one kind of absence does: how it is handled, who sees it, which balance it is deducted from, and how precisely it can be bounded within the day. A new absence type is created with Add absence type.
What the absence type decides
| Setting | What it decides |
|---|---|
| How the day counts | Whether the absence day meets the day’s target and consumes flex or a time bank. The absence type creates its day type itself, under the same name. |
| Process | Request (approval), Notification (no approval) or Employer assignment. |
| Sensitivity | Normal, Restricted or Health. |
| Availability | Whether the absence blocks shift planning for those days. |
| Consumes balance | Which leave balance is spent: annual leave, additional leave days, free time, saved leave or holiday bonus leave – or none. |
| Partial-day precision | How precisely the absence can be bounded within the day. |
| Accrual category | Whether the absent time counts as time equivalent to work for leave accrual. |
| Medical certificate | How many calendar days self-certification covers. A value of 0 means a certificate is always required. |
| Sick pay | The paid-day tiers by length of service, and the waiting days. Shown when the accrual category is sickness. |
Part of a day
Partial-day precision decides what the employee sees in the request under Part of a day.
- Whole days – the absence always covers the whole day, and the choice is not shown at all.
- Morning or afternoon – the employee takes half a day off.
- Clock times – the employee gives a stretch of clock times, or a duration on a day with no frame.
The interface offers only what the absence type allows. The employee is never given an option that would be refused on submission.
For an absence type that consumes a leave balance, Clock times cannot be chosen: a leave balance is day bookkeeping, and 90 minutes is not a day. Choosing a leave balance for the absence type caps the precision at half a day.
In the standard library, sick leave, doctor’s appointments, a child’s sickness, family leave, study leave and unpaid leave come with clock times; annual leave, free time, saved leave and holiday bonus leave with mornings or afternoons; and layoff in whole days. Those are starting values: change them to match your own practice.
What the absence affects
Availability. A partial day takes only the chosen stretch. A shift conflicts with the absence only when it overlaps that stretch, and in staffing figures a partial day counts as its share of a person.
Balances. The absence credits the day’s target with the absent minutes, at most what is left of the day after the work already recorded. Leave that consumes a balance account charges the account the same minutes.
Payroll material. A partial day travels on a row of its own, in minutes, with its own key in the mapping table. See Export the payroll material.
Reports. The absence rate and the absence breakdowns are computed from the absent minutes against the day’s target, so four hours is half a day rather than a whole one.
The unit the law counts in
The same absence is counted in different units by different counters. Kelomo does that for you; the table says what the figures mean.
| Counter | Unit |
|---|---|
| Balances and balance accounts | Minutes. |
| Payroll material | Minutes, on a row of its own. |
| Absence rate and absence reports | Minutes against the day’s target. |
| Leave accrual, the 14-day rule | A day at work: a day with work done on it is a whole day at work. |
| Leave accrual, the 35-hour rule | Hours: hours worked plus the absent hours, capped at the day’s target. |
| The self-certification limit (certificate policy) | Calendar day: a partial day is a day. |
| Temporary child-care leave | Working day: a partial day consumes one. |
| Self-liability days when falling ill during leave | Leave day: the fraction stays with the employee. |
| Shift planning, staffing and forecast | Minutes: the absence takes only the chosen stretch. |
| The concurrent-absence limit in a unit | People: a partial day counts as its share. |
When changes take effect
An absence type’s settings are versioned. Settings from the chosen date creates a new version in force from the date you give: periods already approved and the calculation of past weeks stay as they were.
If a setting or a start date was recorded wrong, open the version in the validity history and choose Correct. The correction edits the version in place; recorded days and locked payroll batches do not change, but the running balance is recalculated.
If something goes wrong
The employee does not see the Part of a day choice. The absence type’s Partial-day precision is Whole days. Change it and give the version a date from which it is in force.
Clock times cannot be chosen. The policy deducts from a leave balance kept in days. Choose Morning or afternoon, or remove the balance deduction if the policy does not consume leave days.
A partial day did not go through: the chosen time was already recorded as work. The approver settles it in the request: Approve without credit grants the absence without touching the day’s hours, and Move the time window grants it for the time that has no work recorded. See Handle leave requests.