In many small companies, attendance lives in one spreadsheet, vacation days in another, sick notes in someone’s inbox and public holidays in a wall calendar. It works — until two people book the same week off, nobody remembers how many days are left, or a sick note can’t be found when it’s needed. Here’s how to bring attendance, time off and sick leave together in one simple system.
Attendance: clock in, clock out
The simplest reliable attendance record is a clock in / clock out button. Employees press it when they start and finish the working day; the system records the times and calculates the hours. In Clocknico the button sits in the sidebar, so it’s always one click away, on desktop and in the Android app.
Attendance becomes much more useful when you can compare it with tracked project time. If someone was present for eight hours but logged three hours of work, that’s worth a conversation — maybe about missing entries, maybe about too many interruptions. Clocknico’s attendance report shows both side by side.
Time off: requests and approvals
A good time-off process is boring in the best way:
- The employee picks the leave type and the dates and sends a request.
- The system calculates the working days — skipping weekends and public holidays — and shows how many days remain.
- A manager or admin approves or rejects it, and the employee is notified.
- Approved leave appears on the team calendar so everyone can plan around it.
Clocknico follows exactly this flow. Each employee has an annual allowance, unused days can be carried over to the next year, and managers see pending requests with a badge in the navigation so nothing waits for days.
Sick leave and sick notes
Sick leave is different from vacation: it doesn’t need approval, it needs documentation. The employee reports the sick days and uploads the doctor’s note. Because this is sensitive health information, access should be limited.
In Clocknico, sick notes are visible only to the employee who uploaded them and to the company’s admins and owner — not to other colleagues or managers.
Public holidays
Every country — and sometimes every company — has its own list of public holidays. Rather than relying on a preset list that might be wrong for you, Clocknico lets admins enter the holidays that apply to the company. They’re then excluded from leave calculations and shown on the calendar.
The team calendar
A shared calendar answers the everyday question “who’s out next week?” at a glance: approved vacations, sick leave and holidays for the whole team, in one view. It’s the easiest way to avoid two key people being away at the same time.
Why keep HR next to time tracking?
- One login, one list of employees. No syncing people between tools.
- Attendance vs. tracked time in the same report.
- Notifications for requests and approvals on the phone, instead of email chains.
- Lower cost — a separate HR tool for a 10-person team rarely pays off.
Getting started
Set the default number of leave days and the working-day length in the HR settings, enter this year’s holidays, and invite the team. People can start clocking in and requesting time off right away.
The HR module is included in every Clocknico plan — and Clocknico is free for teams of up to 5 users.