Bulk allocate a holiday/absence

There may be times when you need to record an absence for multiple employees. This could be if you're closing for a national holiday, such as Christmas, or an extra bank holiday.

When you do this, you can select from any of the attendance categories you have in your system.

The category you select may have an impact on whether holiday entitlements are affected. See Impact on holiday entitlement.

You can only allocate absences for one day at a time. For absences of more than one day you need to enter the dates separately.

Impact on holiday entitlement

To allocate an absence without deducting from your employees' holiday entitlement, you need to make sure you select the correct Category:

  • Do not select Holiday, if you do not want to deduct from holiday entitlement.

  • Select a category that does not affect holiday entitlement, or one that has been added for this specific absence.

  • You may need to add a new category before starting this process.

Screenshot on the absence configuration screen showing the category dropdown

Add specific attendance category

Before you begin, make sure you have an attendance category to use for the absence. You may need to add a category specifically for the absence.

For example, if we wanted to allocate an absence for the Christmas holidays we would:

  • Add a new attendance category called Christmas shutdown.

  • Add New Type to Associated Types/Reasons.

    For our example this could be Christmas shutdown, Business closed, or any other reason relevant to the absence.

Bulk allocate absence

  1. In HR, select All Employees or a group of employees.

  2. Select Action > Group Actions > Allocate a Holiday/Absence.

  3. Select a Category .

  4. Select a Type.

  5. Select the Date.

  6. Select Use Working Pattern to use the employees' standard work hours for the date selected.

    We recommend to select Use Working Pattern, however, if not selected, you can set the duration manually.

  7. Enter a Narrative if required.

  8. Select Check Dates to check if any of the employees already have an absence on the selected date.

    If any conflicts are found, you can either:

    1. Continue and Allocate Dates, meaning anyone with an existing absence will not be given the specified absence.

    2. Select Back to exit, then edit or remove any existing absences to resolve the conflict.

    If you exit, your progress so far will be lost and you will need to begin the Allocate a Holiday/Absence action again.

  9. Once the date has been checked and you're happy, select Allocate Dates to assign the absence to your group.

You need to assign your new category to an attendance screen for it to be visible to your employees. This can be done by going to Admin > Attendance and Calendars > Attendance Screens. Learn more about attendance screens.