A few hours away from the shift is now a thing the system can express: an hours-denominated permission against the rostered shift, with a monthly entitlement, an ESS request path and a Permission Register — and an approved permission excuses the late-in without erasing what the terminal measured.
Hours Can Never Be Deducted From a Quota Counted in Days
The leave quota engine matched a balance by category alone and never looked at the unit it was counted in. The first hours-denominated absence would have taken two days of annual leave for a two-hour errand — silently, and in the direction that costs the employee.
Hours now deduct from hours and days from days, on deduction and on cancellation alike, and a balance that holds both is reported as two figures rather than one meaningless sum. Where no balance of the right unit exists at all, the refusal names the unit — a different problem from “you have none left”, with a different fix.
Administrators: a monthly permission entitlement is itself an hours quota block, generated per employee and per month. Until it is generated the Permission Register has nothing to draw on. Unpaid permission is refused by name until payroll can express it, rather than being recorded as though it were free.
An Approved Permission Excuses the Exception, Not the Fact
When a permission covers a late arrival, the time evaluation stops raising the exception — but what the terminal measured stays on the record for ever. The minutes late are the measurement; the excused minutes are the judgement, and they are capped at what the permission actually granted. Two hours late on a one-hour permission is still an hour late.
The excused time is credited to the day’s paid hours as well, without which a two-hour permitted late-in would silently have turned the day into a half day.
Short Permission, Measured in Hours Against the Shift
Coming in late, leaving early or stepping out mid-shift had no record other than the exception it raised. Short Permission gives it one: an absence measured in hours, granted against the shift the employee was rostered onto, in the three shapes the shop floor actually uses — late-in, early-out and a mid-shift gate pass.
Employees request one from the Permission tab of their leave page; HR records and reviews them on the new Permission Register, and can record one on an employee’s behalf exactly as with any other absence.
A permission is meaningless without a shift to measure it against, so an employee with no published roster day is refused by name rather than being measured against a nine-to-five the plant does not work. The monthly entitlement is checked when the permission is asked for, not discovered at month end: past the cap it is refused, or deliberately overridden and stamped.
A mid-shift gate pass is recorded but costs nothing — the middle punches are not part of the day’s pairing, so the excursion is already inside paid time. It is kept because the fact that someone left the premises matters, not because it changes the pay.