Absence Request Statuses, Duplicates and Review Rules
Requests are Pending, Approved or Rejected. Duplicate dates for a student are blocked unless the existing request is still pending, and only pending requests can be reviewed.
For School administrators, Teachers. Updated 2026-10-09.
Overview
An absence request has a student, a start date, an end date, an optional reason (up to 1000 characters) and a status of Pending, Approved or Rejected. Creating one needs the “add attendance” permission; the person who files it is recorded as the requester.
Duplicate control is by student plus exact start and end date: if one already exists and is Approved or Rejected the system returns a 409 'An absence request already exists for this student and date range with status ...'; if it is still Pending you get 'A pending absence request already exists for this student and date range' unless you confirm the override, in which case the reason on the pending request is replaced.
Approve and Reject need the “edit attendance” permission and only work on Pending requests ('Only pending requests can be approved/rejected'). Rejecting can carry a review note. Each decision stamps the reviewer and time and is audit logged.
Approved requests count as an explanation for absences on those dates in a student's attendance insights (absences inside an approved request are not shown as unexplained). Approval does not change saved registers by itself; teachers still mark the student Absent or Excused on the day. The tab can be filtered by status.
Before you start
- Student exists and is active
- The “add attendance” permission to file; the “edit attendance” permission to review
Steps
- Open Attendance > Absence Requests
- Select New request, choose the student, start date, end date and reason
- If a duplicate warning appears, review the existing reason and confirm only if you want to replace it
- Filter by Pending, Approved or Rejected
- Select Approve, or Reject with an optional review note
- Mark the student Excused or Absent in the register on the actual days
Common problems
Cannot submit - 'An absence request already exists ... with status Approved'
That exact date range was already decided. Create a new request with different dates or ask an admin to handle it manually.
Approve says 'Only pending requests can be approved'
The request was already decided. Decisions cannot be reopened; file a new request.
Approved request but the register still shows Absent
Approval is a record only. Edit the sheet (reverse it first if finalized) and mark the student Excused.