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The text says “sick.” The record says sick.

Your crew doesn’t file absence requests — they text “not feeling good, staying home” at 5 a.m. AbsentEase reads that message the way a person would and books it the way a system should: categorized as sick, late, left early, or a full-day absence, counted against the right policy allowance, in any language, with no codes or keywords to memorize.

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First, it decides what the message is

A call-off

Someone is missing time — a full day, a late start, or an early leave. This is the only kind of message that books an absence, and it is logged with a timestamp and the employee’s exact words.

A question

“How much PTO do I have left?” gets an instant balance reply. “How many hours am I at this week?” is answered straight from the time clock. Neither ever turns into a phantom absence on someone’s record.

A reply

“Gotcha, will do” after a schedule blast is recognized as an answer to your message, not a call-off. Replies stay attached to the conversation where supervisors read them.

Then it books the right category

A call-off isn’t just an absence — it’s a specific kind of absence, and your policy treats each kind differently. AbsentEase detects the category and the hours from the text itself.

Sick

“Not feeling good, staying home” books a sick day — excused, and counted the way your policy counts sickness.

Absent (full day)

“Can’t make it in today, truck broke down” books a full-day absence with the reason kept in the employee’s own words.

Late

“Running 30 minutes behind” books a late start with the hours actually missed — an occurrence, not a missed day.

Left early

“Going home, threw my back out” books an early leave for the hours left on the shift — excused when the reason reads as sickness.

The ledger rounds out the picture with the types a text can’t report: no-shows, PTO days, mid-day appointments with notice (which never count against the early-leave discipline ladder), protected medical leave, company holidays, and suspensions — each counted exactly the way your attendance policy says it should be.

Sick means excused — automatically

The excused/unexcused call is where attendance tracking usually turns into an argument. AbsentEase makes it from the message, consistently:

  • “Going home sick” is excused. A partial day tied to sickness reads as a partial sick day and is excused on its own.
  • A plain late start is not. An errand or an unexplained “running late” stays unexcused by default, so the policy keeps its teeth.
  • Unclear defaults to unexcused. The benefit of the doubt is a policy decision you make once, not a judgment call each supervisor makes differently.
  • Any language, same rules. The language is detected on the first message; employees get replies in their language, supervisors are notified in English, and the categorization works the same either way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. The employee texts in their own words — no codes, no keywords, no menu — and AbsentEase reads the message and books it as the right category: a sick day, a full-day absence, a late start, or an early leave, with the hours involved. The original message is kept with the record.

A partial day tied to sickness — “going home sick” — is excused automatically, while a plain late start or an errand is unexcused by default, and an unclear reason stays unexcused so your policy holds. Full-day call-offs and sick days are logged with the reason preserved, and everything counts against the right policy allowance.

No. There is nothing to memorize and no format to follow. “I can’t make it in, kid has a fever” works exactly as well as a formal message — AbsentEase reads ordinary texts the way a person would, then categorizes and logs them consistently.

AbsentEase detects the language on the first message, understands the text, and replies to the employee in their language while supervisors are notified in English. A crew that is comfortable in Spanish and an office that runs in English both see the message their way.

No — that distinction is the point. AbsentEase first decides what kind of message it is: a call-off, a PTO-balance question, an hours-worked question, a general question, or a reply to a company message. Balance questions get an instant answer, hours questions are answered from the time clock, and none of them ever books an absence.

No-shows are their own category in the attendance ledger, recorded by supervisors and weighted more heavily against your unexcused-hours budget than a called-off absence — because not calling is the worse offense. The ledger also covers PTO days, appointments with notice, medical leave, holidays, and suspensions, each with its own policy behavior.

Keep reading: the categories feed your attendance policy’s counters and discipline ladder and roll up into absence reports & dashboards — all of it starting from one dedicated call-off number.

Let the texts file themselves

Employees call off with a simple text. Supervisors know in seconds. PTO tracks itself. No app to install. Set up AbsentEase for your team today.

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