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Remote Work (Beta)

Request, approve, and track remote work separately from time off, with limits, visibility, and clear reporting in Productive.

Updated over a week ago

The Remote Work feature lets your team request, track, and review remote work days directly in Productive.


This gives you a clear picture of who’s working remotely—without affecting availability or project planning.

With this feature, you can:

  • Approve or reject remote work requests

  • Limit the number of remote work days per person

  • See when and how often someone works remotely

  • Track remote work separately from time off

📌 Unlike time off, remote work does not affect a person’s availability. Employees working remotely are still considered available.

The Remote Work absence category is available on the Professional and Ultimate plans.

How to Set Up the Remote Work Absence Category

Navigate to Settings > Absence.

Select Add Absence Category.

When creating an absence category, you can now choose between two types:

  • Time OffSet up a time-off category to track paid or unpaid leave.

  • Remote Work – Create a remote work category to request and track remote work.

Switch to the Remote Work tab to configure:

  • Name

  • Limit type (limited or unlimited)

  • Allocation (if limited—in days or hours)

  • Booking duration (if allocation in days is selected—full day only / half day)

  • Description

  • Status sync (enable/disable status updates in Slack and Google Calendar)

📌 Remote work doesn’t include a paid/unpaid parameter because it’s assumed the person is working and paid. Remote work also does not count toward overhead.

Switching Between Remote Work and Time Off

You can convert any category between Remote Work and Time Off. Remote Work supports hourly allocation for easier conversion.

To switch, open the category, select the other tab, adjust details, and click Save.

📌 Switching from Remote Work to Time Off changes the “paid” category to “unpaid.”

Allocating Remote Work

After setting up the category, allocate remote work days or hours to your team:

  1. Go to Resourcing > Employees

  2. Open a person’s profile

  3. Navigate to the Absences tab


  4. Click Add New Allocation and select the Remote Work category. Add the details for the selected person and click Add Allocation.

Booking Remote Work

Once a person has an active allocation, they can book remote work:

  • From the Time tab > Use the Book absence option

  • From the Resource Planner > Create a booking directly


📌 Remote Work appears alongside other absence categories in the dropdown.

Where Remote Work Bookings Appear

Remote Work bookings are visible in several places:

  • Employee profile > Absences tab

  • Book Absence screen > Time tab

  • Bookings report > Reports tab

  • Resource Planner

📌 If someone has limited permission to view absences, they’ll only see blocks labeled “absence” in the Planner.

Approving Remote Work

Remote Work categories appear in Approval Policies just like Time Off.

  • Set approvers as you would for other absence categories.

  • You can add the Remote Work category to an existing policy or create a new policy for it.

📌 Managers will see Remote Work requests under Absence Approvals, along with Time Off requests.

Permissions

Permissions for Remote Work match those for Time Off:

  • If you can request Time Off → you can request Remote Work.

  • If you can view/edit Time Off bookings → you can view/edit Remote Work bookings.

  • If you can view/edit Time Off allocations → you can view/edit Remote Work allocations.

📌 Check out this article to learn how to adjust time-off permissions, including Remote Work.

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