How to create absence for your employees

In this article, we will thoroughly guide you through how you can create absences for your employees.

Here you can learn about how to create absences through:

• a user's profile in a browser or in the Smartplan app
• the absence calendar in a browser
• the absence calendar via the Smartplan App

Create absences for your employees

In the following article, we show you how you as an admin can create absences on behalf of your employees. There are two ways of doing this: By going to the user's profile or by adding an absence to the absence calendar.

The advantage of adding absences directly in the user profiles is that in the profile you will get a quick overview of all the approved and declined absences for this person to date. On the other hand, when you want to add a lot of absences for a variety of employees (e.g. the yearly vacation planning), you might risk losing your overall overview this way. In that case, the absence calendar might be a better option for you.

In both cases, absences added by an admin will automatically be approved and visible.

Create absence through an employee's profile (browser + app)

Let us take a look at how you can create absence for a specific employee through their employee profile. In both a browser or the app, you have to go to the menu item "Employees" and click on the respective employee in the list:

In the employee's profile, go to the "Absence" tab and click on "+ Add absence".

You will now be presented with the following page:

Here you can specify the days and, if necessary, the time period for which the absence is to be registered. Usually, absence days will count as 24 hours. However, by selecting just a single day, you have the option to remove the check mark from "All-day event" and define a certain hourly interval for the absence.

Next, you have to choose the absence type of your absence. "Vacation" and "Illness" are added as absence types on all accounts by default. If needed, it is possible to add your own, custom types of absence as well. In this article, you can read more about adding absence types. Next to the absence type, that is being tracked in your holiday account settings, you can also see how the holiday account is being affected.

Once you have added all the needed information, click on "See consequences of absence". In case your employee has been allocated to shifts during the chosen absence period, you can decide how the hours of these shifts should be counted:

It is possible to set a default setting for all upcoming shifts. But if there are one or more shifts that deviate from this setting, you can also pick a different setting for the specific shift.

You can choose:

• Do nothing, the shifts will trigger hours. You will typically choose this option if the employee still should appear in the rota and also still receive salary for the shifts despite the absence.
• The shifts will trigger 0 hours. You will typically choose this option if the employee still should appear in the rota but he or she should not receive salary for the shifts.
• Set shifts as available. You will typically choose this option if the employee should not appear in the rota anymore, but you would like another employee to cover the shift instead.
• Delete shifts. You will typically choose this option if the employee should not appear in the rota, and you also do not want another employee to work instead.

In case you choose to do nothing or that the shifts should trigger 0 hours, you can also choose to add new available shifts in the same timespan. This means that the employee still will appear in the rota despite of the absence and at the same time new shifts in the same timespan and with the same position will be created, which another employee can then offer to take.

In the highlighted box at the top, you have the option to change the default settings for the employee’s absence. If there are any shifts that need to deviate from this default setting, you can adjust them by clicking “Edit” on the shift:

At the bottom of the screen, you can then approve the absence, so that the changes will be visible in “Hours and Salary” and the rota.

The absence will also be directly shown under "Approved absence" in the user profile:

Create absences in the absence calendar (browser)

You can access your account's absence calendar by going to the "Absence" tab in the main menu of your Smartplan account.

Click on "+ Add absence" and choose the person that you want to add absence for:

When you have chosen an employee, you will now be presented to the following page:

Here you can specify the days and, if necessary, the time period for which the absence is to be registered. Usually, absence days will count as 24 hours. However, by selecting just a single day, you have the option to remove the check mark from "All-day event" and define a certain hourly interval for the absence.

Next, you have to choose the absence type of your absence. "Vacation" and "Illness" are added as absence types on all accounts by default. If needed, it is possible to add your own, custom types of absence as well. In this article, you can read more about adding absence types. Next to the absence type, that is being tracked in your holiday account settings, you can also see how the holiday account is being affected.

Once you have added all the needed information, click on "See consequences of absence". In case your employee has been allocated to shifts during the chosen absence period, you can decide how the hours of these shifts should be counted:

It is possible to set a default setting for all upcoming shifts. But if there are one or more shifts that deviate from this setting, you can also pick a different setting for the specific shift.

You can choose:

• Do nothing, the shifts will trigger hours. You will typically choose this option if the employee still should appear in the rota and also still receive salary for the shifts despite the absence.
• The shifts will trigger 0 hours. You will typically choose this option if the employee still should appear in the rota but he or she should not receive salary for the shifts.
• Set shifts as available. You will typically choose this option if the employee should not appear in the rota anymore, but you would like another employee to cover the shift instead.
• Delete shifts. You will typically choose this option if the employee should not appear in the rota, and you also do not want another employee to work instead.

In case you choose to do nothing or that the shifts should trigger 0 hours, you can also choose to add new available shifts in the same timespan. This means that the employee still will appear in the rota despite of the absence and at the same time new shifts in the same timespan and with the same position will be created, which another employee can then offer to take.

In the highlighted box at the top, you have the option to change the default settings for the employee’s absence. If there are any shifts that need to deviate from this default setting, you can adjust them by clicking “Edit” on the shift:

At the bottom of the screen, you can then approve the absence, so that the changes will be visible in “Hours and Salary” and the rota.

The absence will now be visible in the absence calendar:

Create absences in the absence calendar (app)

You can add absences for your employees via the absence calendar in the Smartplan app.

When you have opened your app, go to the menu item "Employees" and select "Absence" in the top right corner.

Now you can select "+" in the left corner and start creating absence for your employee.

Pick the employee and afterwards choose the period for absence. You will have to put in a start date and an end date. As a default setting, the "All-day event" is turned on. This means that the absence will last 24 hours.

However, if your employee is only absent for a few hours or half a day you have the opportunity to choose the period the employee is absent. This can only be done when you turn off the "All-day event." Now you can choose the timeframe by selecting the start and end time of the absence.

Afterwards, you will have to pick the absence type. That could be vacation or illness, for example. You can also add more custom absence types to your Smartplan account if you have another absence type in mind.

You can read more about creating new absence types in this article.

Before adding the absence to the calendar, you are able to add a note to the absence. The note will be visible to you (the admin) and the person who is absent.

Lastly, the holiday account will be visible if you previously activated it in the settings. The holiday account is an optional feature which tracks the number of absence days for an absence type of your choice. As the previous picture provides, the employee has 6/30 registered absent days.

You can read more about the holiday account here.

Once your are ready select "See consequences of absence".

The employee's assigned shifts from the selected time period will be shown here. You will have to decide what happens to the shifts when your employee is absent.

It is possible to set a default setting for all upcoming shifts. But if there are one or more shifts that deviate from this setting, you can also pick a different setting for the specific shift.

You can choose:

• Do nothing, the shifts will trigger hours. You will typically choose this option if the employee still should appear in the rota and also still receive salary for the shifts despite the absence.
• The shifts will trigger 0 hours. You will typically choose this option if the employee still should appear in the rota but he or she should not receive salary for the shifts.
• Set shifts as available. You will typically choose this option if the employee should not appear in the rota anymore, but you would like another employee to cover the shift instead.
• Delete shifts. You will typically choose this option if the employee should not appear in the rota, and you also do not want another employee to work instead.

In case you choose to do nothing or that the shifts should trigger 0 hours, you can also choose to add new available shifts in the same timespan. This means that the employee still will appear in the rota despite of the absence and at the same time new shifts in the same timespan and with the same position will be created, which another employee can then offer to take.

When you are done editing the shifts, select "Create absence".

The absence will now be visible in the absence calendar.

As shown on the screenshot above, you will initially see the amount of employees that are absent on each day. If you click on a day in the calendar, you will then be able to see specifically which employees the absence has been added for.