Attendance validation rules
Validation rules check attendance data against conditions you define, so problems surface where they are cheap to fix rather than at payroll. They catch the records that are technically valid but implausible — the category nothing else in Attendance is looking for.
Where: Settings › Calendar › Attendance validation rules You need: the calendar settings right
Where they fit
Three things watch your attendance data, and they catch different faults:
| Catches | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| Event status | Structurally incomplete days | Missed start, missed end |
| Invalid events count | Anything not valid | The daily to-do list on Events |
| Validation rules | Complete days that are wrong anyway | A 19-hour shift |
A complete day of nineteen hours passes every structural check. Both taps are present, the event is valid, nothing is flagged — and it is obviously wrong. That gap is what validation rules exist to close.
How to use them
Rules state a condition once and flag every record that meets it. They can be enabled or disabled individually, so you can build a set and switch parts on as you tune them.
Start from your own mistakes rather than from imagination:
- Look at your last three payroll corrections. What caused each one?
- Write a rule for each cause — impossible shift lengths, hours far above the schedule, days with a check-in and no plausible check-out.
- Run it over a past month before enabling, so you can see how much it would have flagged.
- Tune the threshold until it flags the genuinely wrong and ignores the merely unusual.
What Happens Next
- Matching records are flagged for review, and the rule's status appears on the Attendance dashboard.
- Flagged records still need fixing in Events — a rule identifies, it does not correct.
- Nothing is blocked. Validation is a warning system, not a gate; a flagged record still reaches the timesheet if nobody acts.
Tips
- Tune before you trust. A rule that flags a hundred records a day is ignored within a week, and an ignored rule is worse than no rule because it looks like coverage.
- Check them before payroll, every period. The whole point is moving the discovery earlier; read at cut-off, they are just bad news.
- Write rules for causes, not symptoms. "Hours over 16" catches a class of error; "employee X has odd hours" catches one person once.
- Review the set quarterly. Rules written for a problem you have since fixed are noise, and noise is what stops people reading the ones that matter.
- Do not use them as policy enforcement. They flag data that looks wrong; they do not stop anyone working late.
Troubleshooting / FAQ
Q: A rule flags nothing, ever. Either the condition is too strict, or the problem it was written for no longer occurs. Test it against a past month to tell which.
Q: A rule flags almost everything. The threshold is too tight for how your team actually works. Widen it until it flags only what you would genuinely investigate.
Q: A flagged record still reached payroll. Expected — validation warns, it does not block. Flagged records need working before the timesheet is signed off.