In Productive, Absence includes categories: Time Off and Remote Work.
📌 This branching is currently in Beta, so depending on your account, you might only see the Time Off options for now.
Absence categories help you track all kinds of time away from the office, from paid vacations to half-days off, sick leave, or even regular work-from-home days.
Once assigned to a person, these categories become known as allocations, defining how much time someone has available to use within that category.
1) Adding Allocations to a Team Member
To assign an absence allocation (for either Time Off or Remote Work):
Go to Resourcing > Employees, or
Navigate to Settings > Users and open the user’s profile
Then switch to their Absence tab and click + Add New Allocation.
📌 By default, only Admins have the permission to add allocations (this can later be adjusted using the Permission Builder).
2) Choosing a Category: Time Off or Remote Work
When assigning an allocation:
Select a previously defined limited absence category (time off or remote work)
Define the available days or hours
Set the validity period (start and end dates)
Optionally, add a description (this is only visible in reports)
Remote Work allocations work just like Time Off allocations, but remote bookings do not affect the person’s availability. This makes it possible to track when someone is working from home without impacting capacity planning.
📌 Manually adding allocations isn't needed for unlimited absence categories as they appear automatically for all users in their Unlimited tab.
3) Absence Approvers and Approval Policies
If your team uses an internal approval process for absence requests, you can assign approvers to specific people. These approvers will be responsible for reviewing both Time Off and Remote Work requests.
If you need more structured control over approval routing and behavior, consider setting up an absence approval policy instead. Policies let you automate who should approve what, based on rules like category, duration, or team.
4) Optional: Import Allocations in Bulk
Looking to import allocations or absence categories into Productive?
You can easily do so through a CSV file import. For more details, check out our article on data imports.
More on Remote Work
Remote Work categories allow you to track when someone is working off-site without reducing their availability for scheduling.
You can allocate Remote Work just like Time Off and set up optional approval workflows if needed.