Absences & Sick Reports

Under Time → Plan → Absences, all absence reports of your team come together: sick reports that employees submit themselves via the LiteLog app, and absences you record in the portal as a manager (e.g. vacation). This is where you decide on open reports — and immediately see which planned assignments are affected.

How reports come in

Self-report from the app

Employees report themselves via More → "Report absence" or via the quick action in the dashboard widget "My shift today". The report contains a type (Sick, Child sick, or Vacation as a request), a date range, and an optional note — and appears immediately in the Pending tab of this page, marked as Self-reported. While a report is pending, the person can withdraw it in the app (status Withdrawn, no decision needed). Other types such as special leave or time off in lieu are recorded in the portal. Details: My Shift & Report Absence (App).

Recording in the portal

Via the "Record absence" button you create an absence for a person: choose the person, type (e.g. Sick, Vacation), date range, and an optional note. The same dialog is also available directly from Planning. Such entries carry the Recorded by manager marker. One report covers at most 366 days; record a longer absence as a follow-up report (extension of the approved predecessor).

Reporting yourself in the portal

Anyone who can see the page but lacks the edit permission gets the same fields behind "Record absence" as their own report — without a person picker: type (Sick, Child sick, or Vacation), date range, optional note. For vacation the dialog shows your own balance if an entitlement is maintained. The report appears as Self-reported in the Pending tab, can be taken back there with "Withdraw", and is decided by another person (four-eyes principle). Your own report has the same limits as in the app: sick and child sick at most 31 days per report (an extension as a new report), vacation at most 366 days.

The list

The page is organized into status tabs:

You can additionally filter by person and date range. Each row shows the date range, number of days, type, status, origin (Self-reported / Recorded by manager), and creation time.

In the Pending tab the oldest reports come first. A report waiting for more than seven days carries the red marker "open for X days" — nothing gets forgotten.

Deciding on a report

The "Decide" button on an open report opens the decision dialog:

1. Review affected assignments — the dialog lists all planned assignments of the person within the report's date range (date, property, shift, time). You see where a gap will open up before you decide.
2. Approve or reject.
3. When approving, use the checkbox "Remove staffing from today (shifts become unassigned)" to decide whether the person is taken off the affected assignments. Past days remain untouched.

If the report overlaps an already approved absence of the same person, it cannot be approved: the dialog names the type and period of the other absence. Reject one of them or shorten the period. Pending requests do not block. 4. After approving with staffing removed, the dialog offers "Reassign now" — one click opens Time → Plan → Shifts with the "Only unassigned orders" filter active for the affected period, so you can close the gaps right away.

Extending an absence

If someone stays sick longer, use "Extend" on the approved report. The extension is created as its own report and goes through its own approval.

Absence days per person

In the employee profile under Absences, below the vacation account, the card Absence days {year} shows the working days of the calendar year per type, sickness first, pending requests as a “n pending” badge, with a year switcher above the cards. The same figures appear as the cards Vacation and Sickness in the person's Overview tab (see employee detail page). Both require the permission Edit time tracking, because the type of absence is health data.

Vacation entitlement & balance

For the type Vacation, LiteLog keeps a vacation balance per person and year — provided an entitlement is maintained:

1. Maintain and read the vacation account — On the employee detail page, tab "Absences", the card Vacation account {year} shows the remaining days large plus entitlement, carried over from previous year, taken and requested. Fields, formula and rules: Vacation account.
2. Balance in the approval dialog — When deciding a vacation request, the dialog shows the balance line: "X of Y vacation days taken · this request: Z workdays · remaining after: R". Requests spanning years show one line per year.
3. Overdraw warning — If the request would exceed the entitlement, the hint switches to a warning tone. Approval is not blocked — you decide freely.

Privacy: Who sees the type?

The absence type (e.g. "sick") is health data. LiteLog therefore only delivers it to authorized users:

• Approvers (permission Edit time tracking) see the type and note — but only for people assigned to one of their accessible properties. For people outside their own area, even the approver list shows just "Absent".
• The affected person themselves always sees their own reports in full.
• Everyone else — for example colleagues with read-only access or in a person's assignment calendar — only sees a neutral "Absent".

Deciding (approve/reject) is deliberately not limited to the approver's own property area: anyone with the Edit time tracking permission can decide any report in the account — so nothing gets stuck when the responsible site manager is unavailable. You can never decide your own report.

The portal calendars (Planning, employee tab "Assignments") also show approved absences only as neutral "Absent" bands.

Automatic notifications

For absences, LiteLog ships two automation rules that are active by default and can be adjusted or switched off under Automation:

• Sick report received — informs the person's deciders as soon as a new report arrives: the people allowed to decide the report (permission "Edit time tracking" or administrator) who are responsible for all properties or for one of the person's properties; if nobody matches, the message goes to the "First admin" role. The default text names the person and the period ("{Mitarbeiter} hat eine Abwesenheit für {Zeitraum} gemeldet"), never the type.
• Sick report decided — informs the affected person (recipient type "Person from the event") about approval or rejection; the default text names the period, the outcome, and the reason ({Zeitraum}, {Status}, {Grund}).

Both texts can be adjusted under Automation; the placeholders {Mitarbeiter}, {Zeitraum}, {Von}, {Bis} and, for the decision, {Status}, {Grund} and {Entschieden von} are available. When the person withdraws their pending report, it disappears from the Pending tab and the trigger "Sick report withdrawn" fires — without a rule by default. To notice withdrawals, create a rule under Automation with the recipient type "Absence deciders"; the placeholders are the same as for the incoming report ({Mitarbeiter}, {Zeitraum}, {Von}, {Bis}).

Permissions

Related pages

• Planning Shifts (Calendar) — close gaps and re-staff
• Duty Roster (Matrix) — the week's staffing with absence bands
• My Shifts & Report Sick (App)
• Employees — Detail page — "Assignments" tab with absence history
• Automation — Rules