Create absence types – Personio

Tip:
If you’re using the setup experience, follow its steps to complete the setup there.

To effectively manage your employees’ absences, you need to create different absence types in Personio. You can create two types of absences:

Standard absences, during which employees are not expected to work. For example: paid leave, sick days, or special leave.
Productive absences, during which employees must work. For example: work from home, business trip, or training.

This article offers an overview of the creation process, explaining each of the available settings in detail. You can then set up an approval process for your absences, and decide how they display in the Absence Calendar.

Create a new absence type

To set up an absence type, follow these steps:

Go to Settings > Work Hours and Absences > Absence.
Add a new absence.
Fill out all the sections, described in detail below.
Create the absence.

General settings

Settings	Description and notes
Name	Use a descriptive and unique name. Your employees see this name when requesting the absence.
Custom ID	A unique custom ID helps you identify the absence more easily in your reports. Not visible to your employees.
Calendar color	Employees with necessary access rights see this color in their Absence tab and in the Absence Calendar.
Category	Choose the correct category for the absence type, as this impacts different functionalities across Personio.
Time unit	Select between daily or hourly absences. Once you create the absence, you can’t change this setting.
Half-day requests	Only relevant for daily requests.

Certificate & Substitute

Settings	Description and notes
Certificate	Decide if and after how many absence days the employee must upload a certificate. The system calculates absence days according to the Validity settings below. If your company is located in Germany, your employees with statutory or another non-private type of health insurance do not need to manually upload a certificate. You must retrieve the certificates instead.
Substitute	Decide if employees must select a substitute for their absence periods. The system doesn't transfer access rights and approval workflows during the substitution. For the latter, delegate absence approvals.
Can substitutes request this absence?	If you disable the option, an approved substitute can’t request this type of absence while substituting. We recommend disabling this option for planned absences, like holiday days, and enabling it for unplanned absences, like sick days.

Validity

Settings

Description and notes

Valid on

Decide how the system calculates absence days when an employee requests an absence:

Work Schedule on Mon-Fri, or Mon-Sat: Based on the overlap between the work schedule and the selected option. Leave taken on public holidays does not count as absence days.
Work schedule, incl. Public Holidays: Based on each employee's individual work schedule. Leave taken on public holidays counts as absence days.
Work schedule, excl. Public Holidays: As the previous option, but leave taken on public holidays does not count as absence days.
Mon-Sun: Any requested day, regardless of the employee's work schedule. Leave taken on public holidays counts as absence days. Only available for daily absences.

Consider time tracked during absences of this type as overtime?

We recommend enabling this option for all your standard absences. For example: paid vacation and sick leave. When enabled:

Any working time the employee tracks during these absences counts as overtime.
Approved absences display as time off in the Attendance tab.
Employees don't receive automatic deficit hours when they don't track time during these absences.
Employees on an hourly wage get their normal pay for the hours they’re absent.

Disable this option for productive absences, such as work from home or training.

Accrual policies

If you want to set a limit to the entitlement employees receive for this absence type, create an accrual policy for it.

Give access rights to the new absence

After creating a new absence type, give your employees the necessary access rights to see and request it. Follow these steps:

Go to Settings > People > Employee Roles.
Under the All employees role, click Access rights.
Scroll down and click Absence.
Locate the new absence type you just created, and tick Own under Propose.
Review the changes and save.

My employees can't see or request an absence

If your employees can't see or request a specific absence type, ensure that:

You have given them the relevant access rights.
You have assigned them an accrual policy if the absence type has one.

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