How do I manage Absences? 

Table of Contents

1. Assigning Administrator Role

2. Activating "Abcenses (Vacation Planing)" 

3. Basic Settings

4. Vacation Parameters

5. Vacation Blockages

6. Creating Absence Types

   1. Assigning Absence Types

7. Defining Work Schedules

8. Creating Permanent Establishments and Public Holidays

9. Importing Absences and Vacation Corrections

10. Editing Absences

11. Evaluating Absences and Creating Reports

12. Transparent Calendar Overview

 

 

1. Assigning Administrator Role

To assign the appropriate admin roles to the person responsible for managing absences, open the Persons menu as the master administrator by navigating to “Admin/Persons/Persons”, and double-click on the desired name. Once you are in the employee menu, go to “Master Data/Roles and authorizations/Tab "Roles”. Under “Time management”, select the checkbox for “Absence administrator”. Below the roles section, choose the organizational units for which these assigned roles should apply. Finally, review your settings carefully and confirm your selection by clicking “Save”.

 

 

2. Activating "Absences (Vacation Planing)

To activate the function for use, open the admin menu “Time management/Absences/Settings/Tab ”Vacation parameters“. Activate the function by checking the box ”Use of absences (Vacation planning)". This will enable you to organize vacation planning for your employees in HR WORKS.

 

3. Basic Settings

In the Admin menu under “Time management/Absences/Settings”, you will find all configurations related to the “Absences” function area.

If you would like to edit or redefine the holiday entitlements of your employees, open the “Types of holiday” tab. Click “New” and enter a name for the new holiday type. Select the appropriate country to apply the relevant legal regulations, then confirm the process by clicking “OK”. Next, enter all the necessary information in the fields below. In addition to the basic settings, you can also define age-related or company-affiliation-related vacation entitlements.

In the Types of Holiday settings for Germany, you can configure advanced options for managing holiday entitlement. First, enter the statutory minimum entitlement, followed by the number of additional leave days granted per year. You can then specify how the holiday entitlement should be handled when an employee joins the company in the first half of the year or leaves in the second half of the year.

Details on the calculation options can be found in the FAQs on the topic of vacation calculation.

 

Expiration of Vacation

In the new vacation type, you can specify the desired expiration date in the “Vacation expiration” tab. Please note that the calculation is based on months and additional days. A preview will display the next expiration date for the vacation entitlement in the current year based on your entries.

In this tab you can create a holiday entitlement that depends on the employee’s age. Select the “New” button and double-click in the line to enter the required information. Finally, click “Save”.

 

Age-Related Vacation

In this tab, you can create a holiday entitlement that depends on the employee’s age. Click “New”, then double-click in the line to enter the required information. When you have finished, save your changes by clicking “Save”.

 

Company-Affiliated Vacation

In this tab, you can click “New” to define a holiday entitlement that depends on the employee’s length of company affiliation. Double-click in the line to enter the required information, and complete the process by clicking “Save”.

 

4. Vacation Parameters

In the “Time management/Absences/Settings/Vacation parameters” menu, you can configure various settings related to vacation planning.

 

Basis for Calculating Vacation Days

With the following setting, you can change the basis for calculating holidays to days or hours.

First Year for Calculation of Holidays

You have the option of specifying the start year for holiday calculation and thus for holiday accounts.

Weekly Working Days

The weekly working days determine the regular working days, which also apply to the holiday types and work schedules.

Allowing Half Absence Days

By selecting the “Allow half absence days” option, you enable employees to request half-day vacation in the system.

Rounding Holiday Entitlement to Whole Numbers

By selecting the “Round vacation entitlement to whole number” option, vacation entitlements are rounded up to whole numbers even outside the entry and exit year. Only values greater than 0.5 are rounded up. 

Warning When Planning Vacation during Probationary Period

If you select the “Warning if vacation is planned during the probation period” option, the person processing the absence request will receive a warning whenever an employee submits a vacation request that falls within their defined probation period.

If no probation period is specified in the employee’s master data, a default duration of 6 months from the start date is automatically applied.

Retention Period for Vacation in Months 

If you do not want new employees to be able to request vacation immediately when they join the company, you can enter a number here to define a waiting period in months. If no waiting period should apply, enter “0”.

Editing/Changing Past Absences

By selecting the “Employees are able to edit absences in the past” option, employees are allowed to modify absences that have already occurred. Please note that enabling this feature may pose a risk of misuse or fraud.

Deleting Future Absences

By selecting the “Employees are allowed to delete absences” option, employees are allowed to delete their own future absences that have not yet been reviewed or approved by the administrator.

Vacation Days of Next Year

By selecting the “Employees are allowed to take vacation days of next year” option, employees are allowed to use vacation days from the next year during the current year.

Expiration of Vacation Days

You can send an informational email to employees from within the system, notifying them of vacation days that will expire in the current year and reminding them to plan their time off.

Click the “Send emails” button to initiate the dispatch. Emails will be sent individually to employees overnight. You can add your own email address as a CC before sending, which serves as proof that the emails were sent.

To see an example of the vacation expiration notification email, click the “Send preview email to me” button. You will receive the email immediately with fictitious data, allowing you to preview how the notification will appear to employees.

 

 

5. Vacation Blockages

If there are important company events that all employees are expected to attend, you can set vacation blockages for these periods. In the admin menu, go to "Time management/Absences/Vacation blockages”, click the “New” button, and fill in the required information. At the bottom of the screen, select the organizational units to which the vacation restriction should apply, then confirm by clicking “Save.”

 

 

6. Creating Absence Types

In the admin menu, under “Time management/Absences/Absence types”, you can specify which absence types are available to employees. The translation keys for existing absence types are permanently stored. You can copy, activate/deactivate, or delete absence types by right-clicking on them. To create a new absence type, click “New.”

When creating a new absence type, you define its basic calculation basis. This setting cannot be changed retrospectively within the absence type.

 

Reduces neither holiday entitlement nor time account, but target working hours:
This absence type does not deduct days from the employee’s vacation account or hours from their time account. It only reduces the scheduled working time during the entered absence period (e.g., vocational school, wedding).

Reduces holiday entitlement:
This absence type deducts the number of working days that fall within the submitted absence period from the employee’s vacation account (e.g., annual leave).

Reduces vacation entitlement for full months:
If an absence spans multiple calendar months, this absence type can be used to reduce the annual vacation entitlement on a pro-rata basis. For each full calendar month within the absence period, 1/12 of the annual vacation entitlement (in days) is deducted from the vacation account. For example, with an entitlement of 30 vacation days per year, each full calendar month of absence results in a deduction of 2.5 days (e.g., maternity leave, parental leave).

Reduces time account:
This absence type deducts hours—not days—from the employee’s time account during the absence period. The vacation account remains unaffected. Working hours are reduced from the time account (e.g., overtime reduction, compensatory time off).

Without reduction of target working hours:
This absence type does not reduce the vacation account, time account, or scheduled working time. It can be used to indicate that the employee is not working on-site (e.g., during a workation).

 

In addition, further columns provide additional configuration options for each absence type:

Key:
Used to assign absence types when importing and exporting absences.

Substitute is mandatory after calendar days:
Specifies whether naming a substituteis mandatory and after how many calendar days this requirement applies.

Usable only by administrator:
Enables the creation of an absence type that can only be selected by absence administrators. Employees cannot choose this absence type themselves.

Ignore vacation blockage:
Allows employees to use this absence type even during periods in which vacation is restricted.

Public:
Determines whether the absence type should be visible to other employees in the company calendar. If not selected, the absence will only appear as “Absent.”

In month payroll:
Specifies that the absence type should be considered in the payroll month and therefore displayed in the change overview in the admin menu under "Wage and salary/Changes".

 

 

Assigning Absence Types

After you have created a new absence type, check its assignment to your organizational units to ensure that it is displayed both to you as the administrator and to your employees.

If you have defined different absence-type assignments for your organizational units, you will need to manually assign the newly created absence type to the relevant units in the admin menu under "Basics/Organizational units".

You can find instructions on how to assign absence types to organizational units in the corresponding Help Center article under point 6.

 

 

7. Defining Work Schedules

You can find instructions on how to create and assign work plans in the corresponding Help Center article.

 

 

8. Creating Permanent Establishments and Public Holidays

First, create your various company locations in the admin menu under “Basics/Permanent establishments”. These locations are used to correctly account for public holidays. You can find instructions on how to create company locations and assign them to employees in the corresponding Helpcenter article.

If an employee has moved to a different business location, open the “Persons/Persons” menu and double-click their name. In the new tab, go to “Master data/Master data”, select the “History” tab, and highlight the relevant entry. Then select the correct business location in the lower section of the window and click “Save”.

Then go to the admin menu “Time management/Basics/Public holidays” and review the public holidays that have already been entered. Here, you can add company-specific holidays such as Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. These holidays can be applied to all business locations within a country, a state, or to a single business location.

To create a new public holiday, select the desired country, state, or business location, then click the “New public holiday” button. Enter the required information in the fields provided and save your changes.

If you want to save the public holiday for multiple years, select it and right-click to choose “Copy for several years.” This will copy the public holiday settings to the upcoming years, up to 2027.

 

 

9. Importing Absences and Vacation Corrections

If you want to import your employees’ absences or corrections, open the admin menu “Time management/Absences/Vacation import.” New types of holiday, absences, sickness notifications, and vacation corrections can be assigned to individual employees or entered for them via an import. The corresponding templates can be downloaded using the “CSV template” button.

 

Format for Importing Types of Holiday:

 

Format for Importing Vacation Correction:

 

Format for Importing New Absences:

 

Format for Importing Sickness Notifications:

The files must be saved in CSV format without the first row containing field names.

Once you have created the import file, click “Upload” and select the desired import type.

In the next window, upload the import file using the “Select file” button. If your file is encoded in UTF-8, check the corresponding box to ensure that special characters, such as umlauts, are processed correctly. Then click “Upload.” Once the imported data has been transferred to the form, complete the process by clicking “Import all.” 

The vacation adjustments or imports are then transferred directly to the employee’s vacation account in the employee menu “Time management/Absences”.

10. Editing Absences

As an absence administrator, you can create or edit absences for employees in your organizational unit(s). First, open the personal absence menus for the employees whose absences you want to manage. Double-click the respective names under “Admin menu/Persons/Persons ” and open the “Employee/Time management/Absences” menu in the new tab.

 

Creating New Absences

To create an absence, click “New Absence” and enter the required details in the window that appears. If you want to add one or more substitutes who must approve the absence before it is approved by the supervisor, click the “Add substitute” button and select the appropriate person(s) from the drop-down menu. If necessary, you can also adjust the status of the absence. Finally, complete the request by clicking “Save.”

 

Edit Recorded Absences

To edit an existing absence, select it and update the details in the input window that appears. Save your changes by clicking “Save.” To remove a requested absence, select it, right-click, and choose “Delete.” Please note that deleted absences cannot be restored.

 

11. Evaluating Absences and Creating Reports

With HR WORKS, you can generate informative evaluations of your employees’ absences in just a few steps. Thanks to direct exports to time recording systems, absence management integrates seamlessly into your existing software landscape and organizational structure.

The following reports are available in the admin menu “Time management/Absences/Reports” and can be created according to various selection criteria:

• Absences overview

• Absences by month

• Absences Export

• Sick Notifications by Months

• Sickness Payment

• Unplanned Days Overview

• Vacation Certificate

• Vacation Overview

The following Helpcenter article explains how to create these reports step by step and describes the information contained in each.

 

 

12. Transparent Calendar Overview

Absences and vacation days are automatically entered into the calendar and posted to the relevant employee’s vacation account. Travel expense reports are also recorded in the calendar. Schedule conflicts or staff shortages are identified early, making inefficient planning a thing of the past.

You can view the calendar overview in your user view under “Company overview/Company calendar.” Further information on the calendar options in HR WORKS can be found here.