Template · Time off and attendance
Employee attendance tracker
In short
An attendance tracker template is a sheet that records, for each employee and each scheduled day, whether they were present, late, absent, on approved leave or a no-call no-show. This version gives you a standard set of attendance codes, a monthly grid, summary formulas for absence rate and occurrences, and guidance on keeping protected leave out of disciplinary counts.
Employee Attendance Tracker template
Employee Attendance Tracker
Build one tab per month in Excel or Google Sheets. Each employee is one row; each calendar day is one column (Day 1 to Day 31) where you enter one code from the code list. Use a drop-down so only valid codes can be entered. Record only scheduled working days; leave days off blank or mark them OFF.
Header (top of each monthly tab)
- Month and year
- Department / team
- Location / site
- Supervisor
- Standard shift length (hours)
- Grace period for late arrival (minutes)
Employee columns (one row per employee)
- Employee ID
- Employee name
- Job title
- Shift / schedule
- DayEveningNightRotatingWeekendPart-time
- Hire date
- Day 1 to Day 31: attendance code for each day
- Notes (approval references, documentation received)
Attendance codes
- P: Present, full scheduled shift
- L: Late arrival beyond the grace period (record minutes in notes)
- LE: Left early without approval
- A: Unplanned absence, called in as required
- NCNS: No call, no show
- PTO: Approved paid time off or vacation
- S: Sick leave (paid sick leave under policy or state or local law)
- PL: Protected leave (FMLA, state family or medical leave, ADA accommodation, pregnancy accommodation); do not count toward discipline
- J: Jury duty, witness duty or voting leave
- M: Military leave
- B: Bereavement
- H: Paid holiday
- U: Approved unpaid leave
- SUS: Suspension
- OFF: Not scheduled
- Half codes: add /2 for half-day (e.g. PTO/2)
Monthly summary columns (formulas, per employee)
- Days scheduled: COUNTA of Day 1 to Day 31 minus COUNTIF OFF and H
- Days present: COUNTIF P
- Late arrivals: COUNTIF L
- Left early: COUNTIF LE
- Unplanned absences: COUNTIF A
- No call, no shows: COUNTIF NCNS
- Approved leave days: COUNTIF of PTO, S, J, M, B and U
- Protected leave days: COUNTIF PL (excluded from all disciplinary counts)
- Unplanned absence rate: (A + NCNS) divided by Days scheduled, as a percentage
- Occurrences for policy: A + NCNS weighted by policy, plus L and LE as set by policy (protected leave never counted)
Team summary (bottom of each monthly tab)
- Total scheduled days for the team
- Team unplanned absence rate: total A and NCNS divided by total scheduled days
- Total late arrivals and early departures
- Number of employees at or above the policy warning threshold
- Days of approved planned leave as a percentage of scheduled days
- Supervisor review signature and date
How to use this template
- Set your code list and grace period to match your written attendance policy before the first entry.
- Create a monthly tab, list every employee with their schedule, and mark non-scheduled days OFF in advance.
- Enter a code for each employee every scheduled day, ideally by the end of the shift, using the drop-down list.
- Record approval references or documentation received in the Notes column, not in the code cells.
- Code anything that may be protected leave as PL and refer it to HR rather than counting it as an absence.
- Review the summary columns weekly and act on employees approaching a policy threshold.
- Lock each month after payroll closes and keep the files for at least the record retention period your payroll records require.
What an employee attendance record is for
An attendance sheet does two jobs. It gives supervisors an accurate, day-by-day record they can use for coaching and, when needed, discipline. And it gives the operation a measure of unplanned absence, which drives overtime, missed service levels and burned-out staff covering gaps.
It is not a timesheet. A timesheet records hours worked for payroll. This tracker records whether a scheduled shift happened and why not if it did not. Many teams keep both: the timesheet template feeds pay, and the attendance tracker feeds the attendance policy. If your timekeeping system already records punches, build this tracker from that export rather than asking supervisors to enter the same data twice.
The codes and thresholds should come from your written attendance policy template. A tracker with codes the policy does not define will be applied differently by every supervisor.
Calculating absence rate
Unplanned absence rate = (unplanned absences + no-call no-shows) ÷ scheduled days × 100.
Worked example: a team of 25 agents is scheduled for 21 days each in March, so 525 scheduled days. They record 19 called-in absences and 2 no-call no-shows. 21 ÷ 525 = 4.0% unplanned absence. For comparison, many operations treat 2% to 3% as healthy for office roles, and contact centers and warehouses often run higher. Track your own trend by team and by tenure rather than chasing an outside benchmark. For definitions and wider absence measures, see our glossary entry on absenteeism.
Some employers also use the Bradford Factor, which squares the number of separate absence spells and multiplies by total days absent, to weight frequent short absences more heavily than one long one. It can be a useful flag, but it must never include protected leave, and a score alone should not trigger discipline.
Keeping protected leave out of the count
This is where attendance tracking most often creates legal risk. FMLA leave, leave as an ADA accommodation, pregnancy-related accommodations, state paid sick leave, jury duty and military leave generally cannot be counted against an employee under an attendance or points policy. Several state and local paid sick leave laws, including those in California, New York and many cities, expressly bar using protected sick days as a basis for discipline.
That is why the template has a separate PL code that sits outside the occurrence formula. Supervisors often do not know an absence is protected at the time. If an employee mentions a medical condition, a family member's illness, pregnancy or military service, code the day PL pending HR review and do not count it until HR confirms. Reversing points after a warning has already gone out is much harder than waiting a day. Rules vary by state and city, so have HR review your code list for each location.
Tracking attendance across shifts and sites
In a 24/7 operation, a "day" can span midnight and shifts can be 8, 10 or 12 hours. Assign each shift to the date it starts, and if shift lengths vary, track hours missed as well as codes so a missed 12-hour shift does not count the same as a missed 4-hour one.
No-call no-shows deserve their own code and their own follow-up. In hourly operations they are the strongest early signal of a leaver, especially in the first 30 to 60 days. Most attendance policies treat two or three consecutive no-call no-shows as job abandonment; whatever your rule is, apply it the same way every time and document the attempts to reach the employee. See our glossary entry on no-call no-show for typical handling.
A spreadsheet works for one site and a few dozen people. Past that, supervisors will be entering codes for hundreds of people a day across shifts and locations. At that point attendance tracking software that pulls punches, approved leave and schedules into one view is faster and far less error-prone than a monthly grid.
Linking the tracker to time off requests
Approved time off should flow into the tracker before the day arrives. When an employee submits a leave request form and it is approved, the supervisor enters PTO, U or the right code on those dates in advance. That way, the only codes entered on the day are real-time events: present, late, absent, no-show.
Once a quarter, compare planned leave against unplanned absence by team. When people cannot get planned time off approved, unplanned absence tends to rise on the same dates. If you see that pattern, the fix is in your time off rules or staffing levels, not in tighter discipline.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make an attendance sheet template in Excel?
Create one tab per month with employees in rows and days 1 to 31 in columns. Add a drop-down list of attendance codes, then summary columns using COUNTIF for each code and a formula dividing unplanned absences by scheduled days.
What codes should an employee attendance record use?
At minimum: present, late, left early, unplanned absence, no-call no-show, approved PTO, sick leave, protected leave, holiday, unpaid leave and not scheduled. Keep protected leave as its own code so it is never counted for discipline.
How is employee absence rate calculated?
Divide unplanned absence days (including no-call no-shows) by total scheduled days for the period and multiply by 100. For example, 21 unplanned absences out of 525 scheduled days is a 4% absence rate.
How long should attendance records be kept?
The FLSA requires employers to keep payroll records for three years and time cards for two years. Records tied to FMLA leave must be kept for three years. Many employers keep attendance records for at least three years, and some states require longer.
Can sick days count against attendance?
Days covered by FMLA, ADA accommodation or state and local paid sick leave laws generally cannot be counted against an employee. Absences outside those protections can count under a consistently applied attendance policy.