EP365 Absence time off without the paperwork — request, approval, calendar and payroll summary
Requests for annual leave, sick days, home office and doctor's visits, approvals, a team calendar and a monthly payroll summary — inside the Microsoft 365 you already have and pay for. No foreign cloud and no extra passwords.
Sound familiar?
This is how it looks in many companies for as long as leave runs through e-mail and a spreadsheet. Not because anyone does it badly — e-mail and spreadsheets were simply never built for approvals, balances and privacy.
“People ask for leave by e-mail and nobody knows who approved it.”
One writes to their manager, another in a chat, a third stops by in person. The approval stays in someone's mailbox and HR finds out about the leave only when it has to be recorded.
“How much leave do I have left?”
The employee asks HR, HR searches the spreadsheet and works out the half days. And who is away next week is known only to whoever remembers every e-mail.
“At the end of the month I retype absences for payroll.”
The overview of who took what is pieced together from e-mails, notes and calendars. One overlooked request or an extra half day, and the numbers no longer add up.
What Absence does about it
Five things that calm leave and absence down fastest. The full list of features is further down in the details.
From request to approved absence in one flow
An employee picks the type and the dates — for a multi-day absence even a half day at the start or at the end, for a doctor's visit the time from–to. The app counts the working days without weekends and public holidays, flags an overlap with another of their requests and e-mails the approvers. They decide from the queue in one click, the requester gets the outcome by e-mail and the approved absence appears in the team calendar straight away.
e-mails, chat and a leave spreadsheet one request, one decision, one calendar
Balances nobody works out by hand
For annual leave and sick days the employee sees the entitlement, the carry-over from last year, the days taken and what is still awaiting approval. HR enters the annual entitlement; the app deducts what is taken.
“how much leave do I have left?” the balance at a glance
Sensitive reasons stay hidden
Types marked as sensitive — we recommend it for sick leave, sick days and doctor's visits, and it is one tick in Settings — go into the team calendar only as a neutral “Absence” entry. The real type is not in the shared calendar at all, and the note on a request never reaches the calendar, e-mails or the payroll summary.
Who is away today, this week, this month
The team calendar shows people by day, weekends and public holidays included, and a card on the overview lists who is away today, this week or this month. Planning a meeting no longer takes a round of phone calls.
Payroll summary in one click
An administrator picks a month and gets a table of person × absence type with totals, downloadable as a CSV for Excel. Only approved requests go in, and the app warns about pending ones in advance.
The fastest route: 30 minutes on screen.
No company presentation. We share a screen and click through the app on sample data — from an employee's request through approval and the team calendar to the payroll summary.
For those who want to know more
Everything that matters in one place — features, a comparison with the alternatives, security, pricing and answers to common questions.
Time-off requests
Absence type, dates and, for a single day, a half day. For a multi-day absence you can take a half day at the start and at the end — if you still work in the morning or come back in the afternoon on the last day. Hour-based types, such as a doctor's visit, take a time from–to. The app counts the working days without weekends and public holidays; an overlap with another of your own requests only raises a warning, the approver decides.
Balances and editing requests
For annual leave and sick days: entitlement, carry-over from last year, days taken and, separately, what awaits approval. Requesters can edit a pending request themselves and cancel a pending request or an approved absence that has not started yet.
One-click approvals
A queue of pending requests with dates, number of days and the note, a badge with the count in the menu and search that ignores diacritics. A rejection requires a reason, which the requester sees on the request and in the e-mail. Approvers are e-mailed about every new request and the requester about the decision — always through Microsoft 365, from the account of whoever took the action.
Team calendar
A monthly people × days view with approved absences, weekends and public holidays. The home screen shows who is away today, this week or this month.
Sensitive types protected in the data
Types marked as sensitive go into the shared calendar only as a neutral “Absence” entry. The real type is not stored there, so it cannot be found even by querying outside the app. Sensitivity is switched on per absence type — we recommend it for sick leave, sick days and doctor's visits.
Private requests
The request list has item-level permissions: an employee can reach only their own requests in SharePoint, approvers and administrators can reach all of them. The note stays with the request.
Entitlements and people
An administrator enters employees' annual entitlement to leave and sick days and the leave carried over from last year, and sees what everyone has taken and has left. Statutory calculations and reductions stay in your payroll system.
Payroll summary
A monthly table of person × absence type with totals per person and for the company on screen, and a CSV export for Excel: for each employee the days per type, total days and total hours. Filters for month, year and a specific employee apply to the export too. Only approved requests are included; the app warns about pending ones.
Absence types, holidays and roles
Your own types with an allowance (annual leave, sick days or none), a unit (days or hours), a colour and a sensitivity flag. Czech public holidays for a chosen year, Easter included, are added in one click; company days off you add yourself. Employee, approver and administrator roles can be given to individuals or to whole Entra ID groups.
Teams and phone
Absence runs as a team tab and as a personal app in Microsoft Teams. On a phone it offers a simplified view for a quick request or approval.
Your data stays with you
Requests, entitlements, absence types, holidays and the team calendar live in SharePoint lists on the app's site inside your Microsoft 365, under your identities and permissions. The app has no server or database of its own and uses no AI.
Requests private in the data too
The request list has item-level permissions: an ordinary employee can reach only their own requests in SharePoint, approvers and administrators can reach all of them. This is not hiding in the app — someone else's request is out of reach even with a direct link.
Sensitive reasons masked on write
For types marked as sensitive the shared team calendar gets only a neutral “Absence” entry. The real type is not there at all, so it cannot be found even by querying outside the app. The note on a request never reaches the calendar, e-mails or the payroll summary.
Only administrators change the setup
Absence types, holidays and annual entitlements are protected by SharePoint permissions — only the app's administrator group can write them, while everyone who uses the app can read them. The app's settings are protected the same way.
No new passwords
People sign in with their company Microsoft account, and e-mails go out through Microsoft 365 from the account of whoever took the action. When someone leaves, IT handles it in one step — blocking the account removes access to the app too.
Only the licence request reaches us
The app downloads the file with your company identifier and expiry date and checks it in your browser. The app sends us no requests, names or reasons for absence; the app code, fonts and release notes load from our content delivery network. A bug report or suggestion reaches us by e-mail only when a user sends it.
Monthly licence by company size
The subscription is based on the total number of users in your Microsoft 365. Within a given size you get the full scope of the app, with no surcharges for individual features.
Implementation
The app creates its lists, role groups and the permissions on the request list by itself the first time a site administrator opens it. Then you add absence types, public holidays (in one click), annual entitlements and roles — and you are ready to go.
A site administrator to open the app for the first time, and a one-off approval of access to Microsoft Graph in the SharePoint admin centre — without it the app sends no e-mails. If you give roles to Entra ID groups, consent to GroupMember.Read.All is needed as well; a group is notified only at its own e-mail address, and annual entitlements are entered for people added to a role individually.
Support rate
Consultancy, environment changes, training or user support beyond the licence.
Support is charged per each started 15 minutes of work. We always tell you the expected scope up front.
Does the app calculate the statutory leave entitlement?
Will colleagues see that I'm at the doctor's or off sick?
Who approves a request?
How do absences get into payroll?
Does the app put leave into Outlook?
Does it work in Teams and on a phone?
Where is our data stored?
Is the interface in English?
What does deployment involve and what does implementation cost?
How do app updates work?
Goes well with Absence
Further reading on the blog
Need help putting your SharePoint in order first? Explore our audit, governance and care services
What exactly do you want to discuss?
Pick what's burning most right now. We'll get back to you, walk through your situation and propose next steps, including an indicative price.