Help Article: Configure Early Leaving Penalisation

Overview

The Early Leaving Penalisation feature enables organisations to automatically identify and penalise employees who leave before their scheduled shift end time.

This feature extends Keka's existing attendance penalisation engine and allows administrators to configure dedicated rules for early departures independently of Late Arrival and Short Hours policies.

It is particularly useful for organisations where presence until shift completion is operationally critical, such as manufacturing facilities, support operations, and shift-based environments.

Who Can Access This Feature?

• Global Admins
• HR Administrators
• Attendance Administrators
• Users with permission to manage Attendance Policies

How to Configure Early Leaving Penalisation

Step 1: Open Penalisation Policy

Navigate to:

Time & Attendance → Attendance Tracking→ Penalisation Policy > choose a policy > versions > pencil icon

Step 2: Add an Early Leaving Rule

Select:

Penalisation Method → Early Leaving

Step 3: Configure Penalisation Criteria

You can define penalties based on:

Number of Early Leaving Incidents

Example:

Apply a penalty after 3 early leaving instances in a month.

Total Early Leaving Hours

Example:

Apply a penalty when cumulative early leaving exceeds 2 hours in a month.

Step 4: Configure Grace Period

Define the allowable early departure window.

Example:

Ignore early departures of up to 10 minutes.

This prevents penalties for negligible timing differences.

Step 5: Configure Grace Exemptions

You can allow a limited number of exempt incidents.

Examples:

• 2 exemptions per week
• 4 exemptions per month

After the exemption limit is exhausted, the policy starts applying penalties.

Step 6: Configure Leave Deduction

Specify leave deduction rules.

Example:

For every 3 early leaving days, deduct 1 leave day.

The system applies deductions automatically when the threshold is reached.

Additional Configuration Options

Ignore Penalisation Based on Working Hours

Choose whether penalties should be skipped when the employee completes:

• Effective Hours
• Gross Hours

This configuration is useful when organisations prioritise total working time over exact shift-end adherence.

Penalise Missing Attendance Logs

You can configure the policy to treat missing attendance logs that result in early departure calculations as penalisable incidents.

Handle Multiple Violations

If the employee exceeds:

• Early leaving incident thresholds, and
• Total early leaving hour thresholds

you can choose to:

• Apply a single penalty, or
• Apply both penalties

How the System Applies Penalisation

Once the policy is configured, Keka automatically:

1. Detects each early leaving event.
2. Calculates early leaving duration.
3. Applies grace periods and exemptions.
4. Evaluates configured thresholds.
5. Processes leave deductions if applicable.
6. Records the penalisation according to policy settings.

No manual review is required.

Example Scenarios

Scenario 1: Instance-Based Penalisation

Policy:

• Grace: 10 minutes
• Allow 2 exemptions per month
• Deduct 0.5 leave day for every 3 early leaving incidents

Result:

An employee leaves early three times beyond the allowed grace period and exemptions.

Keka automatically deducts 0.5 leave day.

Scenario 2: Hours-Based Penalisation

Policy:

• Penalise when cumulative early leaving exceeds 2 hours
• Deduct 1 leave day

Result:

An employee accumulates 2 hours 15 minutes of early leaving during the month.

The configured leave deduction is automatically applied.

Scenario 3: Employee Completes Required Hours

Policy:

• Ignore early leaving if effective hours are completed

Result:

An employee leaves 20 minutes before shift end but has already completed the required effective working hours.

No early leaving penalty is applied.

Important Notes

• Early Leaving is a separate penalisation method from Late Arrival and Short Hours.
• Organisations can use Early Leaving and other penalisation methods simultaneously.
• Grace periods apply before penalties are evaluated.
• Leave deductions are applied only when configured thresholds are met.
• The feature works within the existing Attendance Penalisation framework.
• Existing penalisation configurations remain unchanged.