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Absence Management

Calamari

EU-Made Report an error

Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Calamari sp. z o.o. sp.k. · www.calamari.io

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Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Managing Director

Weighted verdict

Runs a forty-person company in two federal states without an HR department and is liable when leave is calculated wrong. Wants part-time entitlements prorated correctly, the right public holidays per site, carry-over that lapses only after employees were told, and the eAU handled without a phone call to every health insurer.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Managing Director

Entitlements & German leave rules

How this is scored

Whether the tool computes leave the way German and Austrian law and contracts do: entitlements per contract and working-time model, part-time proration, carry-over and expiry with the required notice, public holidays per federal state, half days and hourly leave, and special leave types.

0 — A fixed number of days per person typed in by hand; no carry-over, no proration and no public holidays.

3 — Annual entitlements and national public holidays, with carry-over as a manual adjustment and no statement on part-time or regional holidays.

5 — Entitlements per employee with automatic proration for joiners, leavers and part-time working days, public holidays per German federal state or Austrian region, half days, configurable carry-over with an expiry date, and custom leave types.

8 — Several working-time models per employee with changes over time recalculated, hourly leave, carry-over expiry with automatic notices to employees before leave lapses, special leave and parental leave types with their own rules, and entitlement changes logged.

10 — Leave law modelled and documented: entitlement rules per contract or collective agreement, statutory minimum and contractual leave kept apart where they expire differently, balances recalculated retroactively with an audit trail, and the rules a tool applies published in its help centre.

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The Managing Director

The help centre shows real proration machinery — three methods with worked examples, rounding to half days, seniority and contract-type driven rules, carry-over with limits and automatic expiry — which is most of what a mid-level tool should do. I found no public information on public-holiday calendars per German federal state (the pages only cover whether holidays count inside a request's length) or on employees being notified before carried-over leave lapses, and both matter when I carry the liability for a wrong balance. Hourly absence types are configurable, so it sits at the middle level. 4 5

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Requests, approvals & team calendar

How this is scored

The everyday flow: an employee requests leave on a phone, the right person approves, a substitute is named, and the team can plan around it — judged on configurable approval chains and on what colleagues are allowed to see.

0 — Leave requested by email or in a shared calendar; no approval step and no record of who approved.

3 — Requests with a single approver and a team calendar, but no substitutes, no blocking rules and every absence reason visible to everyone.

5 — Mobile requests and approvals, approvers per team or department, substitutes named on the request, a team calendar that shows absence without the reason, email or push notifications, and calendar sync.

8 — Multi-level approval chains, minimum staffing rules or blackout periods, delegation while the approver is away, configurable calendar visibility per role, Microsoft Teams or Slack integration, and every request, approval and cancellation logged.

10 — Approval logic that matches a real organisation: rules per location, team and leave type, conflicts checked against staffing and shift plans before approval, a complete history per request, and reporting on pending and overdue approvals.

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The Managing Director

Employees can request from web, mobile or Slack, name a substitute, and configurable restrictions can block or merely warn on request length, advance notice and frequency. But I found no public information on the approval side — approvers per team, multi-level chains, delegation — nor on a team calendar, notifications, calendar sync, or which colleagues may see an absence reason. Substitutes and blocking rules lift it past the basic single-approver level; the unevidenced approval and visibility machinery keeps it below the next. 3 4

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Sick leave, eAU & continued pay

How this is scored

Sick notifications and the German electronic certificate of incapacity: whether the tool retrieves the eAU from the health insurer itself or through a named payroll system, how sick days are counted towards the six-week continued-pay and BEM thresholds, and how child-sick days and certificates from private insurance are handled.

0 — Sickness recorded as another leave type with no word on the eAU, certificates or thresholds.

3 — A sick-leave type with a document upload, and "eAU" mentioned without saying who retrieves it or how.

5 — Sick notification by the employee in the app, the eAU retrieval process documented — by the tool itself or via a named payroll system — with the retrieval status visible to HR, and child-sick days as a separate type.

8 — eAU retrieval from the statutory health insurers documented end to end with the certified software named, retrieval results written back to the absence, sick days counted towards the six-week continued-pay limit per illness, BEM thresholds flagged to HR only, and paper certificates for privately insured employees handled.

10 — Sick leave handled as the regulated process it is: eAU retrieval automated with error and follow-up handling, continued-pay and sickness-benefit transitions tracked, BEM invitation workflow supported, reasons and documents restricted to named roles, and the whole process documented in the help centre.

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The Managing Director

Across the homepage, pricing and leave-policy pages I found no public information on the eAU, certificates, child-sick days, or how sick days count towards the six-week continued-pay threshold; sickness could at most be a self-configured absence type with a predefined reason. As the person who would otherwise phone every health insurer, that silence decides the score. 1 4

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Payroll handover, time tracking & API

How this is scored

Getting absences into the payroll run with the right codes and keeping balances consistent with time tracking: exports or integrations for the payroll systems German companies use, time-account interaction, and an API.

0 — No export beyond a screen list; absences are retyped into payroll.

3 — A CSV or Excel export of absences per month, with no named payroll system and no API.

5 — A documented export or integration for DATEV (LODAS or Lohn und Gehalt) or another named German payroll system, absence types mapped to payroll codes, and a documented API.

8 — Several named payroll integrations, absence and overtime balances shared with time tracking, configurable payroll codes per leave type, monthly closing that locks past periods, webhooks, and an API with published limits.

10 — Payroll handover that closes the month: absences, sick days and eAU results delivered to payroll in its own format with corrections flagged, a period lock with an audit trail, a versioned API with a deprecation policy, and the full absence history exportable at contract end.

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The Managing Director

I found no public information on payroll exports, DATEV or any other named payroll system, or a documented API. Time tracking is sold as a module alongside time off, but nothing shows absence and overtime balances actually shared between them. Until handover is evidenced, someone in my office retypes every absence into the payroll run. 1 2

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Health data, access & works council

How this is scored

What the tool does with data that is health data in law: who can see a sickness reason or certificate, how long absence records are kept, whether access is logged, and whether the vendor documents what a works agreement on absence recording needs.

0 — Nothing stated about who sees sick data or how long absences are kept.

3 — Roles for employees, managers and admins, but sickness reasons and documents visible to managers by default, and no retention setting.

5 — Sick-leave reasons and certificates restricted to HR by configurable permissions, colleagues see only "absent", retention or deletion of absence records configurable, and a DPA available.

8 — Field-level permissions per leave type, access to health-related records logged, retention rules per record type with automatic deletion, employees able to see their own records, and documentation aimed at works councils or a works agreement.

10 — Health data governed and evidenced: Art. 9 GDPR processing explained per feature, deletion runs logged and reportable, audit logs exportable, no analytics or AI features run on sickness data without explicit configuration, and the vendor publishing a template or checklist for the works agreement.

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The Managing Director

A DPA is offered publicly and the reason field on a request can be hidden, which is the extent of what the captured pages show. I found no public information on role permissions over sickness reasons and documents, retention or deletion settings, access logging, or anything aimed at a works council — nothing I could take into a works agreement negotiation. 2 4

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Where absence and sickness data lives, who the contracting entity is, and who the subprocessors are — including email, push-notification and support providers. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, and subprocessors unnamed.

3 — EU hosting offered as an option while the contracting entity is non-EU, or the subprocessor list is absent.

5 — EU hosting as standard and an EU contracting entity, but parts of the chain — email, push notifications, analytics or support — are non-EU without an explained safeguard.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, subprocessor list published with locations, and a DPA that covers sickness data as special-category processing.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: vendor, entity, hosting and every subprocessor European, and certification published.

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The Managing Director

The vendor is a Polish company, and that is where the confirmed facts end: I found no public information on where absence and sickness data is hosted, on the subprocessor list — including who delivers the emails and push notifications — or on certification. A European vendor at least clears the first hurdle, but the rest of the chain is unauditable from public pages. 1 2

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a buyer can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per employee or per user, which features (eAU, payroll export, time tracking) sit in which tier, minimum users and the minimum term.

0 — No public prices at all; every tier is a sales conversation.

3 — A starting price exists, but the pricing basis or which features it covers is unstated — the invoice is unknowable.

5 — Tier prices public with the pricing basis given, but at least one commonly needed piece (eAU, payroll export, time tracking, extra admins) is unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every tier priced publicly with its basis, add-on prices listed, minimum users, minimum term and VAT treatment given.

10 — Complete price computability: the annual invoice derivable for a given headcount and feature set, with every add-on, setup fee and overage published.

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The Managing Director

The pricing page publishes a free 14-day trial with no credit card and a custom plan offering contracts and a DPA, but I found no public price figures at all — no per-employee rate, no tier boundaries between time off, time tracking and the other modules, no minimums or term. I cannot compute any invoice from these pages, so every purchase starts as a sales conversation. 2 1

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (5)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Vendor homepage www.calamari.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Pricing page www.calamari.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Leave management www.calamari.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 Entitlements & German leave rules — found from sitemap help.calamari.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Entitlements & German leave rules — found from sitemap help.calamari.io Checked 1 Oct 2026 Details →