Absences & Leave
Record and track leave, sickness, and availability so planning stays realistic
The Attendance page is where you log and track absences across the team. When absence data is current, your daily planning and capacity calculations stay realistic.
Attendance page showing absence heatmap and annual overview
This article refers to a live TurfWise screen. Media is omitted here so the written steps stay current across releases.
What this page does
The Attendance page shows you a heatmap view of absences across your team, broken down by month. You'll see summary cards for holiday taken, holiday remaining, days lost, and sickness periods. There's also a year-end overview showing attendance rates per staff member and monthly absence trends.
When you log an absence here, it affects how that person appears in planning and daily views across TurfWise.
When would you use this?
- A team member calls in sick and you need to log it immediately
- Someone requests annual leave and you need to check for overlap before approving
- You're planning next week's rota and need to know who will be off
- Month-end and you want to review sickness trends or absence rates
- You need to check how many holiday days someone has remaining
How to log an absence
Open the Attendance page
Go to Work > Staff, then click Attendance in the navigation bar. Or open /performance/attendance directly.
Log the absence
Select the team member, set the absence type (annual leave, sickness, training, or TOIL), choose the date range, and add any notes.
Check for overlap
Before confirming, look at the heatmap to see if other staff are already off on those dates. If too many people are off at once, you'll have a coverage problem.
Update your work plan
After logging the absence, check your Work Planning or task assignments for that period. Tasks assigned to the absent person may need reassigning.
What happens when you log an absence?
Once you record an absence:
- The staff member's status is reflected in the absence heatmap
- The weekly insight cards on the Staff Directory update to show planned absences
- Planning pages will reflect reduced capacity for those dates
- The year-end overview updates attendance rate calculations
If you don't log absences promptly, your planning tools will overestimate available capacity.
What absence types should you track?
- Annual leave -- planned time off. Deducts from holiday allowance.
- Sickness -- short-term or long-term illness. Tracked separately for trend analysis.
- Training -- planned development time. Still removes capacity from the rota even though it's productive.
- TOIL / Other -- time off in lieu or other non-standard leave. Easy to miss in planning if not logged.
Keep categories consistent
If one manager logs sick days as "sickness" and another uses "other", your trend analysis becomes useless. Agree on a standard and stick to it.
What to check before approving leave
Before you approve an absence request, answer these questions:
- How many people are already off on those dates?
- Are specialist roles still covered (spraying, machinery operation, supervision)?
- Do any key scheduled tasks need reassigning?
- Is weather-sensitive work planned that needs a minimum crew?
If specialist coverage is thin, it's better to adjust dates than to approve and scramble on the day.
Related attendance pages
The staff navigation bar gives you quick access to:
- Sickness (
/performance/attendance/sickness) -- detailed sickness records and individual absence history - Annual Leave (
/performance/attendance/holiday) -- holiday allowance tracking and remaining days
Common problems and fixes
- Absence heatmap looks empty -- absences need to be logged for them to appear. If your team isn't logging leave, the heatmap will be blank.
- Holiday remaining looks wrong -- check that the holiday allowance was set correctly on the staff member's profile. Go to Staff > [person] > edit.
- Forgot to log a sick day last week -- you can still add it now. The system records the dates you enter, not the date you entered them.
- Staff member returned but still shows as absent -- make sure you updated their status back to Active on their staff profile.
Good habits that prevent issues later
- Log absences on the day they happen, not at the end of the week
- Check the absence heatmap every Monday morning before finalising the week's rota
- After approving leave, immediately check whether the rota needs adjusting
- Review sickness trends monthly so you can spot patterns early
- When someone returns from absence, update their status the same day
Where does this data go?
Absence data feeds into the Staff Directory's weekly insight cards, the heatmap on this page, and the year-end attendance overview. Sickness patterns show up in the sickness sub-page. If you generate weekly or committee reports, absence counts are included there too.
Where to find it
Open Work > Staff, then click Attendance in the navigation bar (direct link: /performance/attendance).