In Productive, Absence helps you track various types of time away from work, such as vacations, unpaid leave, and remote work.
These absence categories are assigned to your team as allocations, allowing them to request time off or work remotely based on your internal policies.
📌 Note: The split between Time Off and Remote Work categories is currently in Beta. If you're not part of the Beta Program, you’ll only see time-off options in your settings until the system-wide update.
How to Add or Manage Absence Categories
Go to Settings > Absence.
Tip: Search for “Absence” in the Settings search bar.
Click Add Absence Category to create a new one, or select an existing category to update it.
You’ll see two category types:
Time Off: affects availability and can be paid or unpaid.
Remote Work: does not affect availability. (More on this below.)
Setting Up a Time Off Category
When you create a Time Off category, you can configure:
1) Name, Color, and Icon
Give the category a name, choose an icon, and assign a color for easy identification.
2) Paid or Unpaid
Mark whether time off under this category should be paid. Paid time off is included in internal cost calculations.
3) Limited or Unlimited
Limited: Each person gets a set number of days or hours, defined on their profile under the Absence tab.
Unlimited: No set limit on how much time off can be taken.
4) Decide whether people can book time off in:
Days (e.g. 1 day, a full week)
Hours (e.g. 2 hours in a day)
👉 You can also support half-days off. Learn more here.
5) Description
Add a short description for clarity. It will appear:
In Settings > Absence
In the person's profile (under their allocations)
In the Resource Planner when booking time off
In Reports (e.g., Booking data source)
6) Status Sync
Enable this if you want time-off bookings to sync with:
Slack status
External calendars
Pro Tip: Status and Google Calendar Sync
After enabling Status Sync for a time-off category, make sure to add it to your integration settings via Settings > App Marketplace (e.g., Slack or Google Calendar).
This ensures your time-off status is automatically synced from Productive to Slack and/or Google Calendar.
Setting Up a Remote Work Category
Remote Work categories behave differently from Time Off:
Bookings do not affect the person’s availability.
Ideal for teams that want to track remote workdays without disrupting resource planning.
For setup details and best practices, check out the dedicated Remote Work (Beta) article.
Archiving and Deleting an Absence Category
You can archive or delete categories to:
Clean up your category list
Fix incorrect setups
Stop using certain absence types
Global Settings for Absence Booking and Approvals
Two global toggles help you manage absence booking behavior:
Allow Absence Booking
Enabled by default. When disabled:
The Book Absence tab is hidden for regular users (great if you prefer your team to use a different tool for booking absence)
Admins and users with permissions can still book absences via the Resource Planner
Absence Approval Process
Enable this if you want absence requests to go through approval.
You can assign one or more approvers for each request.
