What are hour types?
Hour types are different categories of working hours that are distinguished for administrative and payroll purposes. They allow you to apply variations in wage, allowance and regulations to specific types of working hours.
First and foremost, an hour type distinguishes between a presence and an absence of an employee. Using hour types helps employers and employees to register and calculate leave, surcharges and working hours accurately and in line with the legal requirements.
For example: you want to keep the hours achieved by your employees neatly separated from leave and sickness. You create the hour types Labour and Overtime as presence — which count in the hour schedule — and Leave and Sickness as absence. If an employee takes a day's leave, you register that in the dayplanning via the time-off category Leave and the accompanying hour type Leave. In the time check of the work orders you then see, per hour type, how many hours were registered as labour, overtime, leave or sickness.
Hour types are used in various places in Robaws:
- In the dayplanning
- In the time check in the work orders module
- In the hours overview in Wappy
- With time-off requests
Creating hour types
Before you can use hour types, you first have to enable them. You do this via settings > employee > hour type. You then create the hour types the same way.
When you create a new hour type, you fill in the following fields:
Field | Description |
|---|---|
Name | Name of the hour type: labour, overtime, leave, sickness, etc. |
Code | The code that refers to the hour type. You need this code as soon as you pass hours on to your social secretariat: via the SCAB integration or via the export for Prisma (Sodeco Software). For that Prisma export the code is mandatory and at most 4 digits long: if it is missing or contains letters, the file is not created. |
Type | Presence or absence |
Count in hour schedule | May the hours that are registered with this hour type be counted in the hour schedule as hours achieved? |
Time-off category | The category under which this absence falls, for example 'Leave' or 'Sickness'. You choose one per hour type. This field only appears when you set Type to 'absence'. |
Hour type in the dayplanning
Via the dayplanning you can register an absence for an employee as well as a planning assignment. On such an absence you fill in two things: the time-off category and the hour type.
The time-off category says what it is about: leave, sickness, short-term leave, etc. You manage those categories via settings > dayplanning > time-off categories, or via settings > time-off requests. A category has a name and a colour, so that you recognise it immediately in the dayplanning.
The hour type says how that absence is processed administratively. That field appears as soon as you have enabled hour types via settings > employee.
The two fields work together:
- You only see the hour types of the type 'absence' that belong to the chosen category.
- If you choose an hour type first, Robaws fills in the category automatically for you.
- If you then change the category, the hour type is cleared so that you can choose a suitable one again.
Hour type in the time check of work orders
Via the time check of the work orders you look at the presence and absence hours achieved. This lets you check per employee what has been registered.
In this overview you will find the hour types that belong to the registered hours. That way you get a clear overview of the hours achieved per hour type.
Hour type in the hours overview in Wappy
In Wappy the employee can request an overview of the registered hours against the weekly schedule.
Via this overview the employee can also register presence or absence hours for today or for days in the past, which then end up in the time check.
Hour type with time-off requests
If you work with the time-off requests module, the time-off category and the hour type come together there. Your employee submits a request and only chooses a time-off category — so they do not need to know which hour type sits behind it. On approval, the assignee adds the correct hour type.
Two things to watch out for:
- The hour type you choose has to belong to the same category as the request. If that is not the case, you cannot save the request.
- If the chosen hour type has no category, the approval cannot be started. So fill in the category on every absence hour type.
The time-off budget of an employee is attached to the hour type, not to the category. This means you can, for example, set a budget of 20 days on the hour type 'Leave'.
Updated on: 08/09/2026
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