Exporting leave data in absentify can be incredibly useful for tracking, analyzing, and reporting employee absences. Whether you’re a department head or in HR, knowing how to pull accurate leave records for specific time periods is crucial. With absentify’s Excel export feature, you can easily generate detailed reports to keep your records organized and compliant.

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Step-by-Step: How to Export Leave Data

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to export leave data and explain what to expect from the exported Excel file.

  1. Access Export Feature

    Head over to the Settings > Export section in your absentify dashboard.

  2. Select a Time Range

    Choose the exact time frame for your export. You have the option to export data for a specific month or an entire fiscal year, whether that’s the previous, current, or upcoming year.

    It’s important to conduct this export within 12 months after the end of a fiscal year—otherwise, the data will be lost permanently. This is critical for companies that require leave data for audits or internal reviews.

  3. Choose a Department

    After selecting the time frame, you can either filter by specific departments or select all departments to export data for the entire company. This flexibility is especially helpful when different departments need separate reports.

    If a user was part of a department at the time of the leave request but has since been moved to another department, they will not show up in the export for their previous department.

  4. Download the Excel File

    Once the desired parameters are set, click Data Export to generate your file. An Excel file will be automatically downloaded containing three different sheets, each packed with relevant details.

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Export options

The option to export leave data on a monthly basis is only available with an upgrade to at least the mini plan or above. For more information, visit our Pricing page.

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What’s Included in the Exported Excel File?

The exported Excel file contains three sheets:

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1. Allowance

This sheet provides an overview of user allowances and leave taken for the selected time frame. The columns included are:

  • User Id: The user’s app-specific identifier.
  • Custom Id: The user’s custom identifier defined by your organization.
  • Name: The full name of the employee for whom the leave request was created.
  • Email: The email address of the employee associated with the leave request.
  • Status: Indicates whether the user is active, inactive, or archived.
  • Employment start date: The official start date of the user’s employment with your organization.
  • Employment end date: The user’s end date of employment. This column is only populated for users who have been archived.
  • Department: If the user is assigned to multiple departments, they are separated by commas. If a single department was selected during export, only users from that department are included.
  • Allowance: Displays the allowance type.
  • Allowance unit: Indicates whether the allowance is measured in days or minutes.
  • Ignore allowance limit: Indicates (true or false) whether the user is allowed to exceed their allocated allowance. This setting is defined in the configuration of the corresponding allowance type.

The following five columns are all shown in the same absence unit (days or minutes) as the corresponding allowance type and apply to the selected fiscal year.

  • Carryover: The amount of allowance carried over from the previous year into the selected year.
  • Allowance: The total quota allocated to the user.
  • Compensatory time off: The total amount of compensatory time off credited to the user.
  • Taken: The amount of allowance that has been used by the user.
  • Remaining: The remaining allowance available to the user.

Following these columns, each leave type configured in your organization is listed as its own column. If a leave type has been deleted, it will be labeled with (deleted) in parentheses. The corresponding cells display the total number of units taken for each leave type.

Each row represents a specific allowance assigned to a user. If a user has multiple allowances, they will appear in multiple rows with values specific to each allowance type.

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Monthly export differences

For monthly exports, the structure is the same, except the following columns are excluded:

  • Carryover
  • Allowance
  • Compensatory time off
  • Taken
  • Remaining

Instead, a column titled Deducted from allowance is included. This column reflects the total number of absence units deducted from the user’s allowance for the selected month.

The monthly export is optimized for short-term tracking and focuses on actual deductions made during the selected month, rather than the overall yearly balance.

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2. Leave

This sheet contains detailed leave request data based on leave types. It includes the following columns:

  • ID: The app’s unique identifier for the leave request.
  • User Id: The user’s app-specific identifier.
  • Custom Id: The user’s custom identifier defined by your organization.
  • Name: The full name of the employee for whom the leave request was created.
  • Email: The email address of the employee associated with the leave request.

These above fields identify the target user of the absence entry — the employee who is absent. If the request was submitted by someone else (e.g., a manager), that person is not shown in this sheet.

  • Leave type: The type of leave that was requested.
  • Start date: The scheduled start date of the leave request. For hour-based leave types, the start time of day is also included.
  • Start at: The scheduled start time of the request. For day-based leave types, this shows as Morning or Afternoon.
  • End date: The scheduled end date of the leave request. For hour-based leave types, the end time of day is also included.
  • End at: The scheduled end time of the request. For day-based leave types, this shows as Lunch break or End of day.
  • Workday absence duration: The number of days or hours (based on the leave type’s absence unit) that fall within the user’s configured work schedule.
  • Duration: The total duration of the absence, including any days outside of the user’s work schedule such as weekends or public holidays.
  • Allowance unit: Displays the unit (days or minutes) defined for the leave type.
  • Reason: If provided by the user, the reason for the request is shown here.
  • Created at: The timestamp when the request was created.
  • Created by: The user who created the request. This may differ from the “Name”, “Email”, and “User ID” columns, which refer to the person for whom the request was created.
  • Status: Displays whether the request is pending, approved, declined or cancelled.
  • Approval process: Indicates the sequence or structure of the approval flow.
  • Approved at: If approved, the date and time of approval.
  • Approved by: The approver(s) who approved the request.
  • Cancelled at: If cancelled, the date and time of cancellation.
  • Cancelled by: The user who cancelled the request.
  • Cancel reason: If the request was cancelled, this field shows the reason provided by the user who performed the cancellation.
  • Declined at: If declined, the date and time of rejection.
  • Declined by: The user who declined the request.
  • Decline reason: The reason entered at the time of decline by the user who rejected the request.
  • Take from allowance: Indicates (true or false) whether the request deducted from the user’s allowance quota.
  • Allowance type: If Take from allowance is true, this column displays the associated allowance type.

The Take from allowance column is affected by the settings in the leave type. Note that even for leave types configured to deduct from an allowance, this column may still show false if the absence occurred during public holidays or outside of scheduled working hours—depending on whether the leave type is set to ignore the user’s schedule or public holidays.
See Deductible leave settings for more information.

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3. Absences per day

This sheet provides a breakdown of absences on a day-by-day basis, including the following columns:

  • User ID: The user’s app-specific identifier.
  • Custom ID: The custom identifier defined by your organization.
  • Name: The full name of the employee for whom the leave request was created.
  • Email: The email address of the employee associated with the leave request.

These above fields identify the target user of the absence entry — the employee who is absent. If the request was submitted by someone else (e.g., a manager), that person is not shown in this sheet.
To see who created, approved, declined, or cancelled the request, refer to the second sheet (“Leave”) in the export file.

  • Leave type: The type of leave that was requested.

  • Date: The exact calendar date the absence falls on.

  • Month: The month in which the absence occurs.

  • Weekday: The day of the week corresponding to the absence date.

  • Full day: Displays the timeframe of the absence for that specific day:

    • For hour-based leave types, it shows the exact number of hours and minutes.
    • For day-based leave types, it displays “Full day”, “Morning”, or “Afternoon”.

  • Status: Indicates the current status of the absence on that specific day. Possible values include Pending, Approved, or Public holiday.
    Absences that were Declined or Cancelled are not included, as they did not result in an actual absence.

  • Take from allowance: Indicates (true or false) whether the absence deducted from the user’s allowance quota.

This value is determined by the leave type configuration, specifically whether it is set to deduct from an allowance. Even for deductible leave types, false may appear if the absence falls on non-working days or public holidays, and the leave type does not ignore those.

  • Workday absence duration: The number of absence units for the specific date, based on the user’s configured working schedule.
  • Duration: The total number of units (days or minutes) the absence occupies on that specific date.
  • Allowance unit: The unit (days or minutes) used for the leave type linked to this absence.
  • Allowance: If Take from allowance is true, the name of the associated allowance type will be shown. If false, this field remains blank.

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Benefits of Using the Export Feature

  • Customizable Reports: Tailor your data export by selecting specific departments and time ranges.
  • Detailed Insights: Gain an in-depth understanding of leave patterns, approvals, and department-specific trends.
  • Audit and Review Ready: Maintain compliance with company policies and external audits by securely storing your absence records.