Recording a sick note

Entering a sick note

1. Open Absences on the left.
2. In the New request box, under Type, choose Sick leave.
3. Enter From and To. If the end is still open, first enter the period you know and add a follow-up entry later.
4. Click Submit request.

The result: The sick note takes effect immediately. It does not need to be approved — that would also be wrong in substance, because being unfit for work is a fact, not a request. That is why the sentence “This report takes effect immediately — without an approval step.” appears right under the Type selection.

Planned shifts in the period are marked as a conflict in the shift plan, so that management can find cover. This requires two things: your plan includes the shift plan, and the conflict notice only appears for the people who are allowed to plan.

Sick note on a Sunday

The most common case in hospitality, care and retail: Sunday evening, the Monday shift is scheduled, and the employee realises she cannot make it. She enters the sick note — Sunday, 22:00, from her phone. That is fine: there are no blackout times, no weekend filter, and the entry takes effect the moment it is submitted.

What does not happen in this case is worth knowing:

• Zeitflex does not send management a notification about a new sick note — neither by push nor by email. The entry appears in the list under Absences and as a conflict when planning in the shift plan, but nobody is woken up. (The other way round, there is a message: if management revokes an entry, a push notification goes to the person concerned.)
• That is why a call or message to management remains mandatory. The person fulfils the duty to report under § 5 EFZG towards the business, not towards a piece of software. The entry in Zeitflex makes sure the absence is shown correctly in the timesheet, the shift plan and payroll preparation — it does not replace letting people know.
• The tax adviser access cannot enter a sick note. The tax adviser portal is a read-only view; requests and reports always come from the business.

Uploading the doctor’s certificate

If your business accepts the certificate via Zeitflex:

1. When you enter the sick note, the field Sick note (optional) appears.
2. Choose a photo or PDF. On a phone, you can do this straight from the camera.
3. Submit it together with the report.

JPG, PNG and PDF up to 10 MB are allowed. Zeitflex checks not just the file extension but the content of the file — a renamed document is rejected.

In the mobile app, the file may also be submitted later, for instance if there was no signal when the entry was made: the report goes out immediately, and the photo follows as soon as the connection is back. Submitting later only works for your own entry; in the web interface, the file is attached to the form when entering. A sick note has exactly one supporting document attached. If one already exists, a second is rejected (“A supporting document already exists for this request.”) — a health document is never silently overwritten.

Who may see what?

The row for colleagues says “no” three times on purpose: in the shift plan, too, the absence conflict only appears for the people who are allowed to plan. Anyone who only reads the plan simply sees no shift — not the reason for it.

Made a typo? How to withdraw a sick note

Because the sick note takes effect immediately, there is no open request that you can simply delete. Even so, a typo — wrong month, wrong type — is not a matter for support. Zeitflex distinguishes two routes:

On the day of entry: withdraw it yourself. Until the end of the same calendar day (Berlin local time, not UTC), you see the Withdraw button on your own entry. It needs no reason. The entry is marked as cancelled and stays in the change log with a note — it does not vanish without a trace. Four conditions must all apply: it is your own entry, nobody has decided on it, it is a sick note or a child-sick report, and it is still the same day.

From the next day: management revokes it. The button is then called Revoke, it is only available to the owner and management, and it requires a reason. The reason is attached to the entry and recorded in the change log. The person concerned receives a push notification with the reason — nobody should be left puzzling at the end of the month over why a day is missing.

Why the window is so short: an approved day has an effect on the shift plan and payroll preparation. If everyone could delete their own sick note for as long as they liked, the record would be worthless as proof.

Not in the chat

The team chat is meant for arrangements — “Who’s covering Saturday?”, not “Off sick, my back again.” The second sentence is health data, and it slips out casually. That is why every chat group shows the notice: No information about illnesses, diagnoses or other sensitive data. A sick note goes through Absences, not through the chat.

Three reasons to take the notice seriously:

• Chat messages are deleted after the group’s retention period and are not a record. A sick note that only exists in the chat is missing from the timesheet and the month-end close.
• Everyone in the group reads the chat — including colleagues who would otherwise never see the type of absence.
• Such a sentence cannot be prevented technically. Zeitflex does not filter messages and does not read along. The protection lies in knowing the right route.

Incidentally, the tax adviser is never a member of a chat group — not even if management tries to add them by mistake. More on this under Team chat: a shout, not an archive.

The electronic certificate of incapacity (eAU)

Since 2023, employers have retrieved the certificate of incapacity for work electronically from the health insurance fund. Zeitflex does not replace this retrieval and has no connection to the insurance funds’ procedure. The upload here is an internal convenience for the business — for management, who have to plan for the absence, and for cases in which no eAU retrieval is possible (privately insured people, certificates from abroad, child-sick certificates).

The employee’s duty to report to the business remains: no software replaces the sick note itself — the call in the morning.

Child sick

There is a separate absence type for this: Child sick. It behaves exactly like the sick note — it takes effect immediately, needs no approval, allows a supporting document to be attached, and on the day of entry the person concerned may withdraw it themselves. In payroll preparation, child-sick days count as sick days.

Do not write anything about the child in the Comment field that goes beyond the period. The same applies here: the diagnosis is none of the business’s concern.

Frequently asked questions

I entered the sick note at 23:50 and noticed the mistake at 0:10. Why is the “Withdraw” button missing?

Because the calendar day has changed. The window ends at midnight local time, not 24 hours after the entry — “still today” is the rule everyone understands without doing sums. Tell your manager; they will revoke the entry with a short reason, and you enter the correct report again.

The illness is lasting longer than expected. Do I extend the entry or create a new one?

Create a new entry for the follow-up period, starting on the day after the previous end. Zeitflex rejects overlapping periods (“A request already exists for this period”), but entries lined up back to back without gaps are exactly right. Attach a follow-up certificate to the new entry.

Can management see what is on the certificate?

They see the file, i.e. what you uploaded. The employer’s copy contains no diagnosis. So only upload this copy — never the part for the health insurance fund and no doctors’ letters. Every time the owner or management opens the file, it is logged.

We only accept certificates on paper. Do I still have to upload something?

No. The field is optional. The sick note without a file is complete; file the paper certificate in the personnel file as before. Only the information “sick from — to” has to be in Zeitflex so that the timesheet and the month-end close are correct.

Still stuck?

How long sick notes and certificates are retained is explained under Retention periods; what to do for a month that is already locked under Corrections after locking. If something does not work as described, write to support.