Logging Absences

Recording absences accurately is essential for tracking staff availability, managing costs, and meeting your legal obligations as an employer. StaffBrik makes it straightforward to log absences - whether a barista calls in sick on a Monday morning or a chef has a planned hospital appointment next month.

How to Record an Absence

1. Navigate to StaffBrik > Absences and click Log Absence.
2. Employee & Dates - select the employee and set the start date and end date.
3. Absence Category - choose the category (see below). When you continue, StaffBrik checks whether the person already has an absence on or next to these dates, and offers to extend it instead (see Extending an Absence).
4. Affected Shifts - check which of their shifts the absence covers, choose any cover, and answer about any time off they have booked on those days (see Affected Shifts and Sickness on Booked Time Off).
5. Additional Details - add any relevant notes (e.g. "Called in at 6:15am, flu symptoms") and click Log Absence to save it.
6. For a Standard Sick, Disability-related or Approved Medical absence, the form moves on to SSP Calculation and works out Statutory Sick Pay. Check the figures and click Done, or Skip SSP if no SSP is due. See the SSP Calculator for how the figures are worked out.

For an Approved Medical absence, the SSP step first asks "Was [name] unfit to work for the whole day(s)?". SSP is only paid for days someone is too ill to work, so a routine appointment they worked around is not one, and SSP is calculated only if you answer Yes, calculate SSP. If you answer No after SSP was already worked out (in this step, or later while editing the absence), the form tells you the figure will be removed, and removes it when you click Done, close the form, or click Update Absence. Skip SSP also removes a figure that was already saved.

StaffBrik will automatically detect any scheduled shifts that fall within the absence period and mark them as affected. You do not need to manually cancel or reassign shifts - the rota will reflect the absence immediately.

Someone can only have one absence on any day. A second absence on any of the same days is refused, for example "Sam Lee already has an absence logged from Mon 5 Oct to Wed 7 Oct. Extend that absence or change its dates instead of logging another." Changing an absence's dates, or extending it, onto another absence's days is refused the same way.

tip

If an employee phones in sick before their morning shift, log the absence straight away. This gives you the best chance of finding cover while the information is fresh.

Affected Shifts

The Affected Shifts step lists the shifts the person has during the absence: "We found 3 scheduled shift(s) during this period. Select which shifts were affected:".

• Untick a shift they did work. An unticked shift counts as worked, and keeps its cost on the rota and in the reports, with no SSP for it.
• Unticking every shift shows "No shift is ticked, so every shift listed counts as worked and keeps its cost on the rota."
• A covered shift that you later move to a colleague, or to another day, counts as an ordinary worked shift again.

For each ticked shift you can choose who it is Covered by. StaffBrik puts the shift on the colleague's rota when you save, and shows an estimate of what it costs, for example "Estimated cost: about £111.00", for the cover's paid hours (an unpaid break is left out).

• A shift that already has cover shows "Covered by Jo Park. To choose someone else, remove that cover shift from the rota first."
• If the colleague cannot take the shift (they are on leave that day, say), nothing is saved, and the message says why. Choose someone else and save again: the absence is never logged twice.

Which site? If you run more than one site, every absence needs one, because its SSP and cover are charged to that site's rota. StaffBrik fills it in when it can: from the affected shifts when they are all at one site, otherwise from the person's main site. When it cannot tell (the shifts are at several sites, or there are no shifts and no main site), this step shows a Location picker, and you cannot go on until you choose: "Choose which site this absence is for." A business with one site never sees the question.

Editing an Absence

Edit opens the absence on the category step, after "Loading absence...", so you always work on a fresh copy, with its saved notes, cover and selected shifts. Continue shows the affected shifts as you left them. Saving changes only what you changed, so saving a note never undoes a change someone else made a moment earlier. Cover you choose while editing is put on the rota too, and adding days asks about any time off booked on them, as logging does.

Absence Categories

Each absence must be assigned a category. The category determines whether the absence counts toward the employee's Bradford Factor score, which is used to identify patterns of short, frequent absences.

Category	When to Use	Counts Toward Bradford Factor?
Standard Sick	Regular illness - cold, flu, stomach bug, migraine	Yes
Disability-related	Absence directly related to a declared disability	No
Approved Medical	Planned medical procedures, hospital appointments, surgery recovery	No
Compassionate	Bereavement, family emergency, critical family illness	No
Unauthorised	No-show with no valid reason, failure to follow absence reporting procedure	Yes

caution

Disability-related absences are excluded from the Bradford Factor to comply with the Equality Act 2010. Recording a disability-related absence as "Standard Sick" could expose your business to discrimination claims. If an employee has disclosed a disability, always use the correct category.

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Approved Medical absences are also excluded from the Bradford Factor. Use this category for planned procedures such as a knee operation or dental surgery where the employee has given advance notice and the absence has been agreed.

Start and End Dates

Set the first and last day the employee is absent. StaffBrik counts calendar days (not working days) for the absence duration, but only scheduled shifts within the period are flagged as affected.

Example: A sous chef is off sick from Monday to Friday. They were only scheduled to work Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. StaffBrik records a 5-day absence but flags 3 affected shifts.

Extending an Absence

If an employee's absence runs longer than originally expected:

1. Open the existing absence record from StaffBrik > Absences.
2. Click Edit.
3. Change the end date to the new expected return date.
4. Add a note explaining the extension (e.g. "Still unwell, GP signed off until Friday").
5. Click Update Absence. If SSP was calculated, StaffBrik works the total out again for the new dates (see the SSP Calculator).

If you start logging a new absence on days on or next to one the person already has, StaffBrik offers to extend that one instead when you leave the category step: "This employee already has an absence that ends the day before your selected dates. Extending it keeps one spell of absence in one record."

• Extend existing absence works in either direction, so it can backdate the start as well as push back the end. It keeps the existing category.
• Every shift on the added days counts as missed: "To arrange cover or mark a shift as worked, edit the absence after extending it."
• If time off is booked on the added days, it asks whether to give those days back, as when logging (see Sickness on Booked Time Off).
• If the days are already part of the existing absence, it says "These days are already part of the existing absence, so there is nothing to add."
• Create new absence record is only offered when the dates do not overlap, because two absence records cannot cover the same day.

The absence remains as a single record. Either way, absences on days next to each other count as one spell for the Bradford Factor.

tip

Extending an absence keeps one continuous spell in one record, which is easier to follow and keeps the RTW conversation and SSP together. For the Bradford Factor, records that touch or overlap count as one spell whichever you choose, so a run of days is never scored as two separate absences.

Sickness on Booked Time Off

If someone is off sick on days they already have time off booked, the Affected Shifts step lists those days, for example "Holiday on Tue 6 Oct and Wed 7 Oct (15 hours)". Requests still waiting for approval say "not yet approved". The form then asks Give these days back?

• Yes, give them back. "The days come off the booking and any holiday hours go back to Sam's allowance. SSP is paid for them instead, if it is due." A request left with no days is cancelled, with the note "Tue 6 Oct given back: off sick." (or "absent" for an absence that is not sickness), and the employee gets the usual Time off cancelled notification.
• No. The days stay booked and are paid as holiday, with no SSP for them. The absence, the rota and the Absence report all leave SSP off those days.

Only owners and admins can give back approved time off. For a member, the step says "Only an owner or admin can give back approved time off, so the approved days stay booked and are paid as holiday, with no SSP.", and asks Give back the days not yet approved? only when some of the days are still pending.

For a Compassionate or Unauthorised absence, no SSP is due, so the step says "No SSP is due for this kind of absence, so the rota charges nothing for them."

Whatever you answer, SSP is never charged on a day that is paid as holiday, so the same day is never paid twice.

Retrospective Logging

You can log absences after the fact. This is useful when:

• You were too busy to log it on the day (the Saturday morning rush waits for no one).
• You need to correct a record after speaking with the employee.
• Payroll needs historical records tidied up.

Simply set the start and end dates to the correct past dates when creating the absence. StaffBrik will backdate the record and update affected shifts accordingly.

Affected Shifts Auto-Detection

When you log an absence, StaffBrik scans the rota for any shifts assigned to that employee within the absence period. These shifts are automatically:

• Marked as absent on the rota view.
• Taken out of the wage cost for the period. Any Statutory Sick Pay due for those days, with the employer NI and pension on it, is counted instead. The rota charges SSP only on the absence's own qualifying days, and stops once the employee reaches the 28-week maximum. SSP is never charged on a day that is paid as holiday (see Sickness on Booked Time Off).
• Flagged so you can quickly see which shifts need cover.

If you run more than one site, the absence takes the person's shifts out at every site, not just their own, because they are off wherever they were due to work. Their SSP is counted once, at the location set on the absence, so it never inflates another site's wage bill.

Shifts covered by an absence are also left out of attendance and reminders:

• No attendance flags. A covered shift raises no "No clock-in" or other attendance flags, unless the person clocks in to it anyway. A "No clock-in" flag already raised on that shift is cleared when you save the absence, and comes back if the absence is removed.
• No reminder. The employee is not sent the "Your shift starts at..." reminder for it.
• The Team App says so. The employee sees the shift marked Absence logged, with "Your 09:00 to 17:00 shift is covered." See Using the Team App.

You can view all affected shifts from the absence record itself, giving you a clear picture of the operational impact.

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Affected shift detection works with shifts that are already published. If you publish new shifts after logging an absence, StaffBrik will warn you if you attempt to assign a shift to someone with an active absence.

The Absences Page

• The Pattern Alerts card counts only patterns nobody has reviewed yet, matching what the alert list shows.
• The Pending RTW card and the calendar follow the employee, category and location filters. Clicking Pending RTW lists only the absences waiting for a return-to-work conversation, with Show all to go back.
• The calendar's tooltip marks a day (Covered) when someone is covering the shift, and (RTW pending) while a return-to-work conversation is outstanding.
• View History on a dashboard absence alert opens this page filtered to that person.

Finding Cover

Once an absence is logged, its cell replaces the person's shift on the rota. If there was a shift under it, the cell has a Find cover button. Click it to open Convert to open shift for that shift, so someone else can pick it up. See Open Shifts.

The person who is off is not offered their own shift: someone with an absence logged on a day is not shown that day's open shifts in the Team App, is not sent the "New open shift" notification, and cannot claim or be given the shift.