Time & Attendance
Record and approve hourly permissions
An hourly permission excuses part of a working day, such as arriving late or leaving early. Approved time stops counting as late and is not deducted, up to the type's free hours per month.
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In this article
Not every absence is a full day. An hourly permission covers a part of a working day: a late start for a doctor's appointment, an early departure, or an hour away in the middle of the day. Once approved, the covered minutes are no longer counted as late arrival or early departure, so they are not deducted from pay.
Before you start
Create at least one permission type. A permission type is a leave type measured in hours. See leave types. Until one exists, the screen tells you to create a leave type measured in hours.
On the permission type, set the Free hours per month each employee may use at full pay.
Record a permission
Open People › Time & Attendance › Hourly Permissions and select Record permission.
Choose the Employee and the Permission type.
Choose the Type: Late arrival, Early departure or During the day.
Set the Date and the time span with From and To. The end must be after the start on the same day.
Enter the Reason and save.
A permission you record here starts as pending and follows the approval workflow set up for permissions, like one the employee requests from self-service. A permission that overlaps another one on the same day is refused.
Approve or reject
Open the permission's actions and select Approve or Reject.
Confirm. For a rejection you can add a Rejection reason.
When the request is waiting in a workflow step that is not yours, a user with the override right can use Final approve (override) with a Reason.
What approval does
The day's attendance is graded again straight away. A day marked late because of the covered time becomes present.
Only the minutes inside the permission's span are excused. A 30-minute permission does not cover a two-hour delay: the remaining 90 minutes still count as late.
The excused time counts as worked when the system checks for a half day, so an approved permission never turns a day into a half day.
A rejected permission leaves the time unexcused. It counts as late or early departure and is deducted from pay.
The monthly allowance
Each employee can use the type's Free hours per month of approved permissions at full pay. When an approval takes the month past that allowance, the system still approves it and tells you how many minutes are beyond the allowance. Those minutes are deducted on the payslip as Missing Time. If the type is not marked as paid, all its permission time is deducted. Leave Free hours per month empty for no limit.
Rules to know
A pending or rejected permission can be deleted. An approved permission cannot be deleted.
Lateness and early departure that no approved permission covers are charged on the payslip as Missing Time, using the tiers set in HR Settings.
Common questions
The employee says they had permission, but the day still shows late. Check that the permission is approved, and that its From and To cover the whole delay. Only the covered minutes are excused.
Where do employees request permissions? In the self-service app. Their requests appear in this list as pending and go through the same approval steps.