📅 Absence.IO hours reporting tool

A robust and thoroughly tested Bash script to automatically register your breaks and working hours in absence.io for Mac OS and GNU/Linux.

🔧 Setup

The tool requires the following binaries installed in your system (this is checked by the tool):

• jq
• curl
• openssl
• base64
• date

You may already have base64 and date, to install the missing ones you can copy/paste:

Mac OS

brew install jq curl openssl

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install -y jq curl openssl

⚙️ Installation

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/filisko/absence-hours-reporting-bash/refs/heads/main/src/absence.sh
chmod +x absence.sh

After installing it and running it for the first time, it will create a JSON config file next to the script where you will have to put your Absence API ID and Key.

To find API's credentials, you can go to: Absence ➜ Profile ➜ Integrations ➜ API Key (ID/Key).

Then, use the last option documented below to see how time entries are being created from your browser, so that you adjust the configuration file accordingly: timezone, timezone name and schedules.

Please be aware that these three settings might change overtime, e.g.: summer time change. Use the last option again to readjust the settings after you've created a time entry from the browser in order to use it as a reference.

🕹️ Usage

Register your hours for current day

Restrictions:

• It won't allow you to submit the hours on weekends as you probably don't want that.
• Future dates are not possible (restricted by Absence).
• Days with registered Absences (sickness, vacation, etc.) are skipped (an error will popup).
• Days with Holidays are skipped (an error will popup).
• Days with already registered hours are skipped (an Absence API error will popup).

absence.sh

Output example:

📅 Absence.IO hours reporting tool v1.1.0

Hi Filis Futsarov! 👋😊

Date: 2025-06-30
╰➤ Creating work entry from 06:00 to 12:00   (In timezone: 08:00 to 14:00) ✔
╰➤ Creating break entry from 12:00 to 13:00  (In timezone: 14:00 to 15:00) ✔
╰➤ Creating work entry from 13:00 to 15:00   (In timezone: 15:00 to 17:00) ✔

Register your hours for the whole week

With the same restrictions as the previous one.

If you run it any day before Friday it will register the hours for the previous days (e.g.: if you run it on a Wednesday, hours are registered for Monday, Tuestay and Wednesday).

absence.sh week

Register a date range

With the same restrictions as the previous one.

This option allows you to specify your own dates range.

absence.sh 2025-03-10 2025-03-13

Show last time entry

You might be interested in what a time entry looks like, especially the last one.

We suggest you use this option to set up: the timezone, timezone name and schedules.

Usually what you would want to do is:

• Go to the browser.
• Create a time entry.
• See what it looks like with this operation.
• Adjust the config file accordingly (timezone, timezone name, start time, end time, etc.). This way you'll make sure that the time entries are created as the browser would.

absence.sh last

Show time entries of a specific range

This command gives you a full picture of your current time entries. By default, it fetches the last 50 days until today.

absence.sh records

Example output:

2025-07-07: 4.00h [work(4.00h)]
2025-07-08: 9.00h [work(6.00h) break(1.00h) work(2.00h)]
2025-07-09: 9.00h [work(6.00h) break(1.00h) work(2.00h)]
2025-07-10: 9.00h [work(6.00h) break(1.00h) work(2.00h)]

There are also 3 different colors for each line.

• It will be Red if it's zero (no time entries for that day).
• Green if it matches config file's normal_hours parameter (9 by default).
• Yellow if its neither of those (e.g.: you have an absence and you worked half of the day).

This will fetch entries from 2025-07-20 to today.

absence.sh records 2025-07-20

This will fetch entries for a specific range.

absence.sh records 2025-07-20 2025-07-30

Show help

Shows a short description of all the available options.

absence.sh help

Cron

If you want to go to the next level, you can install this as a cron to run it when you finish your working day from Monday to Friday (if there is an absence or holiday, it won't do anything).

1 17 * * 1-5 /path/absence.sh

🤝 Contributing

Clone the project:

git clone [email protected]:filisko/absence-hours-reporting-bash.git

Install BashUnit:

./install_bashunit.sh

Watch & Run the tests:

This watches for changes either on the code or in any of the tests.

# watch all tests
./watch.sh tests

# watch one specific test (probably what you want at first to do TDD)
./watch.sh tests/run.test.sh

Run all tests:

This script is used for the GitHub action. It runs all tests.

./tests.sh

🧾 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License (MIT). Please see LICENSE for more information.