Record lunch, vacation and sick leave using their respective log types. The leave times specify the duration of the leave being recorded; the maximum duration is a limit for saving entries, not the default length of leave. Check the dates and times, as well as the same user's other entries.
Requirements and permissions
Creating leave entries in the browser requires your organisation's working time feature to be enabled and permission to create entries for the selected user. Creating your own entries and creating entries for other users involve different permissions. Creating entries for other users requires administrator rights or working time monitoring permission that applies to the user.
Recording leave does not require permission to change the service settings. An administrator maintains the default leave times and maximum durations.
Recording leave in the browser
- Open Working time monitoring from the main menu and select Create new worktime entry at the top of the view.
- Select the user and a Log type: Sick leave, Vacation or Lunch.
- Under Creation mode, select Single entry. Fill in Start date and Start time in the Start section, and End date and End time in the End section. For leave that continues overnight, the end date is the following day. The end time must not be before the start time.
- Select Preview at the bottom of the form. Check the user, date, start and end times, duration, and any warnings and errors. Preview does not save anything.
- Save by selecting Create new worktime entry. If the Log entry conflicts window opens, select Back and correct the details. When creating entries for multiple days, you can also select Create valid days only if at least one day is valid. In this case, invalid days will not be saved.
- Check the entries created in the Working time monitoring entry list or Calendar view. Also check any days that may have been skipped: partial success does not mean that the entire leave period has been recorded.
Leave spanning multiple days
On the same creation form, select Same hours for multiple days. Fill in First day, Last day, Daily start and Daily end. The date range may include up to 30 days, counting both the first and last day. This creates a separate entry for each day, with the same times, for one selected user.
Weekends are included too. If the daily end time is the same as or earlier than the start time, each entry ends the following day; identical times mean a duration of 24 hours. Before creating the entries, remove any days that should not be included using the trash icons on the preview rows. If you change the form details or open the preview again, check the included days again.
See the detailed instructions for the working time calendar and creating entries for multiple days.
What are the comparison times in the preview based on?
The browser preview compares the leave times entered with the time window in a work time rule or the service's default setting. The start and end times you enter manually are retained: the comparison does not replace them. A difference in the start time, end time or duration appears as a warning. A comparison difference alone does not prevent an otherwise valid entry from being saved.
The comparison uses the most recently updated active work time rule that has automatic calculation enabled and applies to the user either directly or through a manager or mobile user role. The relevant weekday must be enabled in the selected rule. If it is disabled or no configuration exists for that day, the preview does not fall back to an older rule.
For vacation and sick leave, the rule's time window is used only if the day's planned log type matches the leave being recorded and the required times are available. Otherwise, the comparison uses the default leave times. The lunch comparison always uses the times in the default setting.
A date-specific or annually recurring day off defined in the rule for an enabled weekday overrides the rule's Default type and makes vacation the planned log type for the day. A date-specific day off takes precedence over an annually recurring one. The vacation comparison starts at the weekday's start time and ends after the number of hours specified for the day off. Without such a day off, the weekday's start and end times from the applicable leave rule are used.
For rule maintenance, see the separate work time rules guide. Always check the actual leave; the preview's comparison times alone do not establish its correct duration.
When is saving blocked?
- Lunch, vacation and sick leave must have an end time. They cannot be left as running timers.
- The same user can have only one entry of the same leave type with the same start date. This also applies to entries at different times of day. Correct the existing entry instead of adding a new one.
- General working time, sick leave and vacation time entries are checked for overlaps with each other. Even an exactly shared start or end time can prevent saving. A running entry can block a new entry; the general maximum duration is used to estimate its end.
- Task, service request, lunch and quantity-based entries are excluded from this standard overlap check. However, the restriction on vacation entries sharing a start date is broader: no other working time entry can start for the same user on a vacation day, including a task, service request, lunch or quantity-based entry.
- If a time entry that started the previous day continues into the first vacation day, it must be followed by an uninterrupted period off: 24 hours for each consecutive recorded vacation day. The check also includes task and service request entries. Check both the entry that started before the vacation and the start time of work after the vacation. The end of a running entry is estimated using the general maximum duration, so stop the timer at the actual end time.
For example, if a night shift that started before the vacation ends at 06:00 on the first vacation day and there are two consecutive vacation days, the next time entry can start no earlier than 48 hours later, at 06:00 two days later. This check for time off applies when an earlier entry continues into the first vacation day; the restriction on entries sharing a start date with vacation applies to vacation days in all cases.
How lunch affects automatic working time
When a work time rule's automatic calculation ends a general working time entry governed by the rule, it deducts the duration of a lunch entry already saved for the same user and the working time entry's start date. This deduction takes precedence over the rule's lunch deduction amount and is also made when the rule's automatic lunch deduction is disabled. No new lunch entry is created in this case. Lunch recorded on mobile is also taken into account.
If lunch has not been recorded and the rule's lunch deduction is enabled, the calculation deducts the time specified in the rule and creates a lunch entry. For example, a working day from 08:00 to 16:00 with an already recorded one-hour lunch results in 7 hours of general working time. Check the automatically generated working time and lunch together.
Default times and maximum durations
In the browser, an administrator opens Settings → Settings → Time tracking settings and clicks the setting's name. The Default leave windows setting defines Start time, End time and Max hours separately for Lunch, Vacation and Sick leave entries. Sick leave in the setting refers to the same log type as Sick leave on the entry form.
The original default times are 12:00–12:30 for lunch and 08:00–15:30 for vacation and sick leave. The default maximum duration for each leave type is 24 hours. Your organisation's saved settings may differ from these.
Max hours must be greater than 0 and no more than 24. The duration of the default time window must also fit within the leave type's maximum duration. If the default end time is earlier than or the same as the start time, the time window continues into the following day. Identical times mean 24 hours.
When saving leave, its own maximum duration is used. The length of other time-based entries, including task and service request entries, is limited by Max consecutive hours per log entry in the same settings section. Its default is 24 hours, and the allowed value is greater than 0 and no more than 24. A quantity-based entry represents an amount and has zero duration; the timer's maximum duration does not apply to it.
An excessively long entry with an end time will not be saved. First check whether the start or end date is incorrect. Changing the setting does not recalculate the times of entries that have already ended, but the changed limit affects subsequent time corrections and running timers.
Automatically stopped timers
The system checks for excessively long running time entries every half hour. The limit is reached when at least the general maximum duration has elapsed since the start. The timer may therefore not appear to stop immediately when the limit is reached; background processing can also delay the update.
A successful automatic stop sets the end time to start time + maximum duration, rather than the time of the check. The entry's status becomes Completed, and Work log ended from is System. The saved duration is calculated from this capped end time. The entry is not approved at the same time, and any associated task or service request is not marked as completed.
If you change the general maximum duration, check the list of running entries that exceed the limit on the settings form before saving. The new limit may shorten the duration saved for these entries. Saving the setting does not itself stop the timers; they are stopped during a later background check.
Duration rounding and checking the result
The saved duration of a time entry with an end time is rounded up to a whole minute. However, the maximum duration check uses the exact difference between the start and end times before rounding. For example, with an 8-hour limit, 7 hours, 59 minutes and 30 seconds falls within the limit and is saved as 480 minutes. 8 hours and 1 second exceeds the limit and will not be saved.
If a timer starts at 08:00 and the maximum duration is 8 hours, an automatic stop sets the end time to 16:00 and the duration to 480 minutes, even if the background check takes place later. This does not confirm the actual duration of the work.
Reload the Working time monitoring data and open the entry you want to check. Verify the user, log type, dates, times, duration and approval. After an automatic stop, also check the Completed status and System as the source of the stop. You can check changes to the times on the History tab of the entry's editing window in the browser.
Correct the actual times before approval. Approval of an approved entry must first be revoked separately; a Processed entry is locked. See correcting an entry and approving entries.
Android and iOS
Sick leave is labelled Sick Leave in Android and Sick leave in iOS, and the other labels in both apps are Vacation and Lunch. Leave created on mobile is recorded for the signed-in user. The same duration limits for saving, the restriction on start dates for the same leave type, and the vacation restrictions also apply to mobile entries. The preview and its rule comparison described above apply to the browser creation form.