In Productive, Absence includes categories: Time Off and Remote Work.
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 allowances, defining how much time someone has available to use within that category.
Employee profiles also visually track remaining vacation days based on the allowance and any booked time off within the validity period.
1) Adding Allowances to a Team Member
To assign an absence allowance (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 Allowance.
📌 By default, only Admins can add allowances. You can later adjust this through custom permission sets.
2) Choosing a Category: Time Off or Remote Work
When assigning an allowance:
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)
For instance, you can set the validity period for an annual allowance ranging from January 1 to December 31, and assign amounts such as 25 days for a full-time employee.
Remote Work allowances work just like Time Off allowances, 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 allowances isn't needed for absence categories defined as unlimited 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 Allowances in Bulk
Looking to import allowances 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 set up Remote Work just like Time Off, including optional approval workflows if needed.