When booking an absence in either the Calendar or Availability Screen, Focus uses one of three Calculation Types (Add To, Set To, From Schedule) to decide how to apply the hours to the employee’s Timesheet. Each Calculation Type applies the time in different ways.
The Absence Reason that you choose dictates which Calculation Type, how many Hours and which Rates are applied by default. These defaults are set when an Absence Reason is created.
You can override these defaults, if required, when booking the absence.
This guide will look at:
What it does: Adds the new total to any existing time.
Example: An employee attends a 1-hour internal training session after their regular 8-hour shift. Their line manager uses the ‘Internal Training’ Absence Reason to book it which has a default of 1 hour. The training session time is added to the worked time, resulting in a total of 9 hours.
What it does: Replaces any existing time with the new total.
Example: An employee clocks in at 09:00 but, due to a family emergency, they leave work suddenly, clocking out again at 09:22. Their line manager uses the ‘Compassionate Leave’ Absence Reason to account for this sudden absence. The Absence Reason uses the ‘Set To’ calculation type. The default total of 08:00 hours is applied to the Timesheet, replacing the 22 minutes of work and creating a full day’s absence instead.
What it does: Applies whatever hours are assigned by the Shift Rule (their schedule).
Example: The line manager books a holiday for an employee on a day where they are scheduled to work. Their scheduled hours are used to calculate the total.
Important note - Using ‘From Schedule’ can lead to unexpected results if the employee is not on the expected schedule.
Calculation Types are what Focus uses to calculate time when making edits. In Timesheets, they come into play when an edit to hours is being made.
Action holiday requests from your team.
Explaining how to create new Absence Types and Absence Reasons makes it much easier to demonstrate how they are applied day-to-day.
