How to calculate attendance percentage

The formula and the days that go into it

Attendance percentage = Days present / Scheduled working days x 100. Scheduled working days are the days a person was rostered to work in the period: calendar days minus weekly offs and paid holidays, counted only from the joining date or up to the last working day for people who joined or left. Days present are the days the person actually worked, with a half day counted as 0.5. Many HR teams also report a second figure that leaves approved paid leave out of both sides: Days present / (Scheduled working days minus approved leave days) x 100. The first figure shows availability. The second shows attendance discipline.

• Approved paid leave: absent in the first formula, left out of the second.
• On duty and approved work from home days: present, because the person was working.
• Half days: 0.5 present. If the other half was approved leave, treat that half like any other approved leave.
• Leave without pay and days absent without approval: absent in both formulas.
• Weekly offs and holidays: left out, unless the person was rostered to work that day.

Worked example for one employee and one branch

Kavita Nair is a sales coordinator at a Pune branch that works Monday to Saturday. July 2026 has 31 days and four Sundays, so she had 27 scheduled working days. She took 2 days of approved earned leave, was absent 1 day without approval, and reached office after the half-day cut-off once, which counts as a half day. One day she attended a client training in Mumbai on an approved on duty request, which counts as present. Days present = 27 minus 2 minus 1 minus 0.5 = 23.5. Her attendance percentage is 23.5 / 27 x 100 = 87.04 percent, rounded to two decimals. Leaving out approved leave, it is 23.5 / 25 x 100 = 94.00 percent.

For the whole branch, add up days, not percentages. The branch has 25 people: 24 worked the full month and one joined on 16 July, which gave her 14 scheduled days after the two Sundays that followed. Total scheduled days = 24 x 27 + 14 = 662. The team took 31 days of approved leave, had 18 days of unapproved absence and 7 half days, which is 3.5 days. Days present = 662 minus 31 minus 18 minus 3.5 = 609.5, so branch attendance is 609.5 / 662 x 100 = 92.07 percent, or 609.5 / 631 x 100 = 96.59 percent with approved leave left out. Averaging the 25 individual percentages would give the new joiner's two weeks the same weight as a full month.

Decisions to write into your policy

Two branches can report different percentages for identical behaviour if they count days differently. Write the rules once, in the attendance policy, and use them for every report and incentive. The points below are the ones that cause disputes when an attendance bonus or a warning letter depends on the number, so settle them before the first month is calculated rather than after someone questions the result.

• Whether approved leave counts as absence for attendance incentives, and whether sick leave is treated differently from other leave.
• Whether a late mark that became a half-day penalty also lowers attendance percentage, or only pay.
• How a night shift that ends after midnight is counted: always to the date the shift started.
• Whether training days, company events and client visits count as present.
• The rounding rule: two decimals, and never rounding up to cross an incentive threshold.

Mistakes to avoid

The most common mistake is dividing by calendar days, which pulls every percentage down by the weekly offs and makes a six-day branch look better than a five-day one. Close behind is mixing sources: taking present days from the biometric export but leave from a separate spreadsheet, so a day of approved leave with a stray punch is counted twice. Calculate from one attendance record after corrections are approved, not from raw punches, and state the basis, strict or excluding leave, on every report you share.

Step by step

1. Write down what counts as present. Agree the treatment of paid leave, on duty, work from home, half days and penalty days with the department heads who will use the figure. Put it in the attendance policy so every branch calculates the same way.
2. Get scheduled days per person. For each employee, take calendar days in the period, subtract weekly offs and the paid holidays that apply to their branch, and limit the range to the joining date and last working day. Use the roster for shift staff whose weekly offs rotate.
3. Count present days after corrections. Work from the attendance record after missed punches and regularization requests are settled. In ZeniaHR you can download the day log for up to 92 days as CSV and count present, half day and absent days per person.
4. Add leave and on duty days. Pull approved leave by type, plus approved on duty and work from home days. Check that no day is counted twice, such as a leave day that also shows a stray punch.
5. Calculate per person, then total the team. Apply the formula for each employee to two decimals. For a team, branch or department, add present days and scheduled days first and then divide, so part-month employees carry their true weight.
6. Review outliers before you publish. Share the names below your threshold with their managers before the figure feeds an incentive or a warning. A hospital stay or an unrecorded client visit should be corrected at source, not argued over later.
7. Report with the basis stated. Show both figures, strict and excluding approved leave, with the month and the scheduled days. In ZeniaHR, Attendance Analytics adds an absence grid by department and day that shows where absence clusters.

Frequently asked questions