Using time off when BambooHR is connected

When your team connects BambooHR, it becomes the place you book leave. Rofinery reads from it and shows your absence on the resource calendar and in capacity reports, so your bookings and your team's schedule stay in step without anyone typing anything twice.

This article is for everyone in the team. If you're setting the connection up, read Setting up BambooHR in Rofinery instead.

Who this affects

Everyone in a team that's connected BambooHR. You don't need any particular role or permission to see your own time off.

Not sure whether your team has connected it? Go to Calendar → Time off. If you see a note saying time off is managed in BambooHR, it's connected. If you see a Request time off button, it isn't, and this article doesn't apply to you.

Only a team owner or admin can connect BambooHR. If you think your team should have it, speak to them.

What changes when BambooHR is connected

The last two matter. Nothing about how your leave affects scheduling changes. It still reduces your availability on the resource calendar and still counts in capacity reports. Only where you book it has moved.

Booking time off

Book it in BambooHR, the way you always have.

Rofinery gives you a shortcut. Go to Calendar → Time off and click Book time off in BambooHR at the top of the page. It opens BambooHR in a new tab.

Your booking appears in Rofinery within about 15 minutes. You don't need to do anything to make that happen.

If you land on Rofinery's old booking form from a bookmark or an old email, you'll get a short page explaining where to go, with a link straight to BambooHR. Nothing is broken; the form just isn't in use any more.

Checking your balances

Go to Calendar → Time off.

Across the top you'll see a card for each of your absence types, showing how much you have left and how much you've used this year.

These figures come straight from BambooHR. Rofinery shows them exactly as reported and never recalculates them, because BambooHR handles accrual, carryover and any manual adjustments.

Two things you might see:

Unlimited means BambooHR tracks that type without an allowance. Bereavement and time off in lieu are often set up this way. It doesn't mean something's broken.

A date under the cards tells you when those balances were last checked. Balances update overnight, so if you booked leave this morning your balance may still show yesterday's figure. Your booking will still be listed under Booked leave.

Where your team's leave appears

Booked leave and Recent leave on the same page show your own absence, with the dates and number of days.

For everyone else's, use the resource calendar. There's a link at the bottom of the page. Time off shows there as it always has, so you can see who's away when you're planning work.

Leave also feeds the capacity and utilisation reports, reducing available hours for the days someone is off.

How quickly changes appear

If something urgently needs to show sooner, an admin can force a sync from Workspace settings → Integrations → BambooHR using Actions → Sync time off now.

What admins should know

Some Rofinery settings stop applying while BambooHR is connected. They're kept, not deleted, and they start working again if you ever disconnect.

Still in use:

• Time off types in Workspace settings → Time off. Synced leave is filed under these, so they still matter.

Not in use:

• Minimum notice periods

• Blackout dates

• Time off approvers, in Workspace settings → Members

• Per-member annual leave entitlements

The reason is the same for all of them. Leave arrives from BambooHR already approved, so there's nothing left for a Rofinery rule to check. Each of these screens shows a note explaining that while the connection is live.

The member entitlement screen changes too. It shows that person's BambooHR balances instead of Rofinery's own figure, read-only.

Limits and constraints

You can't book leave in Rofinery. The request and admin booking forms are switched off. Rofinery never writes to BambooHR, so anything booked here would exist in one system and not the other.

You can't approve, decline or cancel synced leave in Rofinery. Those buttons are gone from synced requests. Do it in BambooHR and the change follows through on the next sync.

Leave booked in Rofinery before you connected is kept. It still shows on the calendar and in reports, marked Added in Rofinery so you can tell it apart. It can't be edited any more.

Hours-based absence is converted to days. Rofinery works in days. A type BambooHR measures in hours, often time off in lieu, is converted using your working hours for that day. If you work a standard pattern it's exact. On an irregular pattern it's a close approximation.

Only leave inside the sync window appears. By default that's 90 days back and a year ahead. An admin can import older leave if you need it.

People not matched to a BambooHR record are skipped. If your leave never appears at all, this is the most likely reason. Ask an admin to check Match people.

Troubleshooting

• Your leave isn't showing. Check when the page last synced, at the top. If it's recent, ask an admin to confirm you're linked under Match people in the BambooHR settings, and that the absence type you used is mapped rather than ignored.

• Your balance looks out of date. Balances only sync overnight. The date under each card tells you when it was last checked. Your booked leave list will be current even when the balance isn't.

• A balance shows Unlimited. BambooHR reports that type as having no tracked allowance. That's a BambooHR policy setting, not a Rofinery problem.

• You clicked an old link and got an explanation page. That's the retired booking form. Use the link on that page to go to BambooHR.

• Leave you cancelled in BambooHR still shows in Rofinery. Give it 15 minutes. If it's still there after that, ask an admin to run Actions → Sync time off now and check Recent syncs for a failure.

• A type of leave never appears. The type may be set to Ignore, or may still need a decision from an admin. Both are in Match time off types.