Grant compliance exceptions

Someone on sick leave should not be nudged, escalated, or counted against the compliance rate. A compliance exception covers exactly that: a temporary, date-bounded exemption with a reason attached, granted for one person and revocable at any time.

Exception or permanent exemption?

Onplana has both, and they serve different cases:

• Permanent exemptions live in the enforcement settings: exempt roles (Guests by default) and per-user exempt flags. They have no end date and are right for people who will never file timesheets, like executives or external observers.
• Exceptions have a start date, an end date, and a required reason. They are right for sick leave, sabbaticals, parental leave, or a new hire’s first weeks. They expire on their own, and both granting and revoking one is recorded.

For the weeks an exception covers, the person derives as Exempt on every compliance surface: the dashboards skip them, reminders and escalation chains pass over them, and the hard lock does not fire for them.

Grant an exception

1. Open Organization Settings → Configuration → Timesheets and find the Timesheet exceptions panel.

2. Start a new grant and pick the member. Guests are not offered, since they are already outside the compliance roster.

3. Set the from and to dates. Both ends are inclusive, and the exception applies to any week the range touches.

4. Enter the reason. It is required, and it is what an auditor reads later to understand why those weeks were excused.

5. Confirm. The exception takes effect immediately.

Revoke an exception

If plans change, revoke the exception from the same panel. Revocation is deliberately non-destructive: the record stays, marked with when it was revoked and by whom, so the history of “exempt from these dates, then revoked on that date” can always be reconstructed.

Note

Every grant and every revoke writes an audit log entry with the person, the date range, and the reason. These entries are included in compliance evidence exports, which is how you prove to an auditor that missing weeks were approved absences rather than silent gaps.

Best practices

1. Use exceptions for date-bounded absences; use Exempt flag for permanent exemption. Sick leave, parental leave, sabbatical, onboarding ramp — exception. Executive who never logs time — Exempt. The two have different audit-trail characteristics.
2. Write meaningful reasons. “Personal leave” is the minimum; “Surgery + 4-week recovery per HRIS” is what an auditor needs. A short sentence makes the difference between “this is a legitimate gap” and “this is a missing week with no explanation”.
3. Backdate exceptions promptly. A team member who returned from leave to a hard lock has lost productivity. Granting the exception immediately on return (or proactively before leave) prevents the block.
4. Coordinate with HR systems. Most leaves are known in HRIS first. A weekly sync from HRIS to Onplana’s exception API prevents manual exception filing. Talk to your integration team.
5. Revoke promptly when plans change. A leave canceled or shortened needs the exception revoked. The audit trail shows both the grant and revocation; missing the revocation distorts compliance retroactively.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• The exception didn’t fire for the week expected. Inclusive dates: from = include start day, to = include end day. A from-Mon exception applies to that Monday’s week, not starting Tuesday.
• A guest user appears in the picker. They shouldn’t — guests are outside the compliance roster. If you see one, the user’s org membership may have changed; refresh.
• The audit log shows two grant events for the same exception. Two admins may have granted the same exception in a race. Onplana doesn’t dedupe, but the dashboard shows the exception with overlap visible.
• Compliance dashboard still shows the person as non-compliant after exception grant. Compliance is computed at the enforcement worker’s cadence (hourly by default). Wait an hour or trigger a manual recompute.
• Hard-lock didn’t lift after exception grant. Same cause — recompute timing. Onplana retries within an hour.

How this combines with other features

• Exceptions + Hard lock. A hard-locked user gets unblocked the moment a covering exception grants. The lock itself reads from the same compliance state. See Enforce timesheets with a hard lock.
• Exceptions + Escalation chains. An exception skips escalation for the covered weeks. The chain resumes when the exception ends, if non-compliance persists. See Run escalation chains.
• Exceptions + Evidence export. Granted and revoked exceptions appear in the evidence export, with their reasons. Audit-friendly. See Export compliance evidence.
• Exceptions + Audit log. Every grant + revoke writes an audit row with the actor, target, dates, and reason. See Read audit logs.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
HRIS leave tracking	Onplana exceptions are the “mark this person off compliance” half of leave
Spreadsheet leave list	Onplana adds first-class structured exceptions
Microsoft Project Online	Resource calendar exceptions ≈ Onplana exceptions
Workday	Onplana doesn’t natively integrate; sync via API
BambooHR	Similar — API sync is the recommended path

FAQs

Who can grant and revoke exceptions? Owners and Admins by default, via the compliance management permission. It is configurable in the permissions matrix. Auditor access tokens cannot manage exceptions; they are read-only by design.

Can an exception cover a week in the past? Yes. Backdating an exception is the standard way to clear a hard lock or an escalation for a week that was missed for a legitimate reason.

Does an exception hide the person’s logged hours? No. Any hours they did log remain visible everywhere; the exception only changes their compliance status to Exempt for the covered weeks.

Can I extend an active exception’s end date? Today the exception is immutable after creation — but you can grant a second exception with overlapping dates. The compliance system recognizes either. Or revoke the first and grant a new one with the right dates.

Are exceptions visible to the person they cover? The person sees their compliance status as Exempt for covered weeks but doesn’t see the reason directly. The reason is for admin/audit context.

Does an exception cost AI tokens or have any other side effect? No. Exceptions are pure metadata; they don’t trigger AI calls or billing events.

Related

• Monitor timesheet compliance — what exceptions affect
• Set expected hours overrides — for permanent expectations
• Export compliance evidence — exceptions in evidence trails