NDT Technician Leave and Time Off Management
Leave requests and allocations, visible to crew planners. Request a demo. Affordable. Accessible. Fully customizable. Quote on request.
Why leave is an operations problem in NDT
In an office business, leave is an HR matter. In an NDT company it’s an operations problem. When a Level II RT technician books two weeks off and nobody tells the scheduler, you find out on the Monday of a shutdown. Then the client’s crew list is wrong, a replacement has to be found at short notice, and someone ends up driving through the night.
The usual setup doesn’t help. Leave requests arrive by text message, email or a word in the yard. HR keeps a spreadsheet, operations keeps a whiteboard, and the two only agree by accident. Technicians coming off a long rotation want their days off straight away, just as the next job wants them back. Training courses, recertification exams and vision tests take people off the schedule too, and they rarely show up anywhere operations looks.
Time Off in Atlantis NDT ERP is the standard Atlantis ERP Time Off app, set up for an NDT company. Technicians request leave, managers approve it, and approved leave feeds the technician availability calendar that Team Assignments uses to dispatch crews. The person building next week’s crew sees the leave before they assign anyone, not after.
This page explains how Time Off works for a company with field technicians, the leave types NDT companies usually need, how it ties into scheduling, and what setup looks like.
What the Time Off app does
The standard Atlantis ERP Time Off app covers everything most companies need for leave, and none of it needs custom code:
- Time off types. Paid leave, sick leave, unpaid leave, compensatory days, training leave and any other types you define, each with its own rules.
- Allocations. How many days each employee is entitled to per type, given manually or earned through accrual plans, for example a number of days per month worked.
- Requests. Employees request full days, half days or hours, depending on how each type is set up, and can add a reason.
- Approvals. Each type can be approved by the employee’s manager, by a time off officer, by both, or by nobody, for example for automatically accepted public holidays.
- Supporting documents. Types such as sick leave can be set to allow an attached document, like a medical note.
- Public holidays and mandatory days. Holidays are set per company or working schedule, and you can mark mandatory days when leave can’t be taken.
- Dashboard and calendar. Employees see their balances and past requests. Managers see a team calendar of who is off when.
- Reporting. Leave taken and remaining by employee, department and type.
For an NDT company the value is less in any single feature and more in where the approved leave goes afterwards. Approved leave isn’t just a balance on an HR screen. It blocks the technician out of the schedule.
Leave types that fit NDT work
A generic leave setup has annual leave and sick leave. An NDT company usually needs a few more, because technicians are off the schedule for reasons that aren’t holidays. Here is a typical starting set we work through with you:
| Leave type | How NDT companies use it |
|---|---|
| Annual or paid leave | Standard entitlement, allocated yearly or earned through an accrual plan. |
| Sick leave | Requested after the fact where needed, with an optional medical note attached. |
| Rotation or field break | Days off after a long rotation or shutdown, where your contracts or policy grant them. |
| Compensatory days | Days given back for weekend or holiday work on a site. |
| Training and exam days | Time off the schedule for courses, recertification exams or vision tests, where you treat these as leave rather than assignments. |
| Unpaid leave | Requested and approved like any other type, without using a balance. |
| Public holidays | Set per country or working schedule, useful if you have crews in more than one country. |
You don’t need all of these, and you may need others. Some companies treat training as a Team Assignments entry rather than leave, since the availability calendar has its own training status. We agree the right split with you during implementation.
The aim is that every reason a technician can’t be dispatched shows up somewhere operations looks, so it never has to be remembered.
How a leave request flows
A request should take a technician less than a minute. Here is the typical flow:
- Request. The technician opens Time Off in a phone browser, picks the leave type, the dates and, where allowed, half days or hours, and adds a short reason. Their remaining balance for that type is shown as they go.
- Notify. The approver gets a notification in the ERP and, depending on your settings, by email. The request also shows on the team calendar as pending.
- Check. Before approving, the supervisor or operations manager checks the dates against current and planned assignments. Is the technician on a job those days? Is anyone else with the same method and level off at the same time?
- Approve or refuse. The approver approves, or refuses with a reason. For types that need two approvals, such as manager plus time off officer, both have to sign off.
- Update availability. Approved leave updates the technician’s availability in Team Assignments, so they no longer show as free for those dates.
Every step is logged with a name and time. If a technician later says their leave was approved and the scheduler says it wasn’t, the record settles it.
For sick leave, the flow usually runs the other way. The technician, or the office on their behalf, records the absence after it happens and attaches a note if your policy asks for one. Availability updates the same way.
Time Off feeds technician availability
This is the part that matters most to an NDT company, and it’s why Time Off belongs in the same system as your scheduling.
Team Assignments in Atlantis NDT ERP gives each technician an availability calendar with entries for assigned, leave, training, sick and unavailable. Overlaps are blocked, so a technician can’t be both assigned and on leave on the same day. Technicians and equipment serial numbers can’t be double-booked either.
Approved time off feeds that calendar. In practice, that means:
- When operations builds a crew, technicians on approved leave don’t appear as available for those dates.
- A technician’s next available date takes their approved leave into account.
- Utilisation reflects the days they were actually available to work, which makes the number more honest.
- If someone tries to assign a technician over approved leave, the overlap is blocked rather than discovered on site.
The reverse matters too. When a technician requests leave, the approver can see what they’re already assigned to. If the request overlaps a dispatched job, the approver can refuse it, move the dates or arrange cover before approving. That saves a lot of last-minute scrambling.
For more on how dispatch works, see the Team Assignments app. For the technician record that holds availability, certifications and the NDT profile, see the Employees app.
Shutdown season, rotations and busy periods
Most NDT companies have a rhythm. Turnaround and shutdown seasons pull every available technician onto site, and quieter months follow when people want their leave. Time Off can help you manage that rhythm instead of fighting it.
Mandatory days. If you know a major shutdown will need everyone for a fixed period, you can mark those dates as mandatory days. Leave requests can’t be placed on them, which prevents the awkward conversation where a request gets approved months ago and then has to be withdrawn.
The team calendar. Before approving leave for the quiet months, operations can see at a glance how many Level II UT or RT technicians are already off in the same week. Spreading leave out avoids a week where you have to turn down work.
Rotation breaks. For companies running fixed rotations, such as a number of weeks on followed by weeks off, rotation break entries make the off period visible in the schedule. Whether that’s done through a leave type or through Team Assignments depends on how you run rotations, and we set it up the way that suits you.
Compensatory days. Weekend and holiday work is normal on a shutdown. Allocating compensatory days as a separate type keeps them apart from annual leave, so both the technician and the office know what’s owed.
Multiple countries. Public holidays can be set per working schedule. Crews working abroad can follow the local calendar while office staff follow the home one.
Who uses Time Off
| Role | What they do in Time Off |
|---|---|
| Field technician | Requests leave from a phone, checks balances, attaches sick notes, sees approval status. |
| Crew supervisor | Approves leave for their team and checks requests against current jobs. |
| Operations manager or scheduler | Watches the team calendar, approves or plans around leave in busy periods, sees availability in Team Assignments. |
| HR or time off officer | Sets up leave types and allocations, runs accrual plans, handles second-level approval, manages public holidays. |
| Accounts or payroll | Uses leave reports for payroll and for unpaid leave deductions, under your local rules. |
| Owner or general manager | Sees leave patterns across the company and checks that busy periods are covered. |
Access is controlled by role. Technicians see their own balances and requests. Supervisors see their team. HR sees everyone. Reasons attached to sick leave can be kept visible only to the approvers and HR.
For a small company, one person often does most of these jobs. The app works the same way, and the payoff is still the same: leave shows up in the schedule automatically.
How Time Off connects to the rest of Atlantis NDT ERP
- Team Assignments. Approved leave feeds the technician availability calendar, and overlaps with assignments are blocked.
- Employees. Leave is recorded against the same employee record that holds the NDT profile, certifications, status and next available date.
- Certificates. Expiring certificates and vision tests raise warning tasks 90 days ahead. Planning recertification or a vision test around leave is easier when both are in the same system.
- Timesheets. Hours on site are logged against jobs, and days on leave are not. The two together give a full picture of each technician’s time.
- Calendar and Discuss. Approved leave can show on shared calendars, and approvers get notified in the ERP, so requests don’t sit unseen in an inbox.
- Training. If technicians study in the eLearning portal, including the Practical NDT 3D practice platform available to enrolled learners, you can plan study days into quiet periods and record them the way you prefer.
The point of one database is that a leave approval doesn’t need to be copied anywhere. It’s approved once and every screen that cares about availability sees it.
For everything included in the ERP, see the Atlantis NDT ERP apps overview.
What implementation looks like
Atlantis NDT deploys and configures the ERP for you. For Time Off we work through:
- Your leave policy. Entitlements, how leave is earned, carry-over rules, sick leave rules, and how rotation breaks and compensatory days work. If your policy lives in employment contracts, we help you turn it into leave types and allocations.
- Leave types. A list that matches your company, with approval rules and whether half days, hours or supporting documents apply to each.
- Allocations and balances. Opening balances for every employee, so the first day on the new system starts from the right numbers.
- Accrual plans. If leave is earned over time, we set up the plan to match your policy.
- Public holidays and mandatory days. Per country or working schedule, plus any shutdown dates you want blocked.
- Approvers. Who approves for whom, with cover for when an approver is away.
- Link to scheduling. Confirming that approved leave shows up as expected in Team Assignments before you go live.
- Training. A few minutes for technicians, a short session for approvers and HR.
Anything beyond standard Time Off, for example a specific rule your contracts require, is scoped and configured as part of the customization agreed with you. Pricing is quote on request, and the ERP is built to be affordable and accessible for NDT companies of any size.
To see it with your own leave types, book a Time Off demo.
Frequently asked questions
Does approved leave stop a technician from being scheduled?
Yes. Approved leave feeds the technician availability calendar in Team Assignments, where overlaps are blocked. A technician on approved leave doesn’t show as free and can’t be assigned over the leave.
Can technicians request leave from their phones?
Yes. Technicians use Time Off in a phone browser to request leave, check balances and see approval status. They need a connection to submit.
Can we block leave during a shutdown?
Yes. Mark the shutdown dates as mandatory days and leave requests can’t be placed on them. The team calendar also shows who is already off.
Can leave need two approvals?
Yes. Each leave type can be approved by the manager, a time off officer, both, or nobody. Two-step approval is common for long leave.
Can we handle different public holidays for crews abroad?
Yes. Public holidays are set per company or working schedule, so crews abroad can follow the local calendar.
Can sick leave include a medical note?
Yes. Leave types can be set to accept a supporting document, and access can be limited so only approvers and HR see it.
Know who’s off before you build the crew
Every NDT operations manager has a story about the technician who turned out to be on holiday the week of a big job. Time Off in Atlantis NDT ERP makes approved leave part of the schedule automatically, so that story stops happening.
Tell us how your crews rotate and how leave works today. Request a quote for Atlantis NDT ERP, or ask for a demo covering Time Off, Employees and Team Assignments together.
Works with
- Employees: Technician records, levels, documents and contracts.
- Discuss: Team chat and channels, threaded onto jobs and records.
Send an enquiry about Time Off · All ERP apps · Atlantis NDT ERP
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