The Scenario
You are a payroll manager. Payroll closes Friday at noon. It is Thursday morning and you need every absence taken company-wide in April, sick leave, holiday, and anything else, to reconcile against contracted hours before the run.
Your payroll workbook is open. The Absences tab is empty.
The bad version of this Thursday:
- Navigate to BreatheHR's absence module
- Export sick leave for April
- Export holiday for April
- Export "other" absences separately
- Import three CSV files into three tabs of the workbook
- Write formulas combining them into one Absences tab
- Realize the employee name format differs across the three exports
- Fix the mismatches
- It is 3 PM on Thursday and payroll closes tomorrow at noon.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI connects to BreatheHR and pulls the full absence record for the date range, already structured, into the workbook.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Pull all BreatheHR absences between 1 April and 30 April into the Absences tab of this workbook. Include employee name, absence type, start date, end date, and total days. Group rows by employee name, then sort within each employee's block by start date.
SheetXAI calls BreatheHR, pulls every absence in the date range across all types, and writes the grouped, sorted table into the Absences tab. One pull, all types, clean output.
What You Get
An absence table for April in the Absences tab, ready for payroll:
- Employee name — consistent across all absence types
- Absence type — sick, holiday, or other
- Start date and end date — formatted consistently
- Total days — as BreatheHR calculated them
All absence types in one table, no merging, no formula work. Payroll can run on time.
If you need a department subtotal row, ask SheetXAI to add one after each department's employees. Same prompt, one extra sentence.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
Absence data for payroll often needs logic on top. SheetXAI handles it inline.
When some absence records have missing end dates
An employee submitted a rolling sick leave entry and the end date is blank.
Pull all BreatheHR absences for April into the Absences tab. Where the end date is blank, mark total days as "TBC" and write "Needs Review" into a flag column. For all other rows, populate total days normally.
When you need to separate SSP waiting days from qualifying days
Your payroll system treats the first three sick days differently from day four onward.
Pull all sick-leave absences from BreatheHR for April into the Absences tab. For each record, add two columns: SSP Waiting Days (days 1–3) and SSP Qualifying Days (day 4 onward). Use the start and end dates to calculate the split.
When you only need absences for one department
The finance payroll run is separate from the rest of the company.
Pull all BreatheHR absences between 1 April and 30 April for employees in the Finance department only. Write into the Absences tab with employee name, absence type, start date, end date, and total days.
When the reconciliation needs absence hours joined to contracted hours
The Contracts tab has contracted hours per day per employee. Payroll needs absence in hours, not days.
Pull all BreatheHR absences for April into the Absences tab. Join total absence days per employee to the contracted hours in the Contracts tab, matching on employee name. Add a "Hours Absent" column converting days to hours. Flag anyone whose absence hours exceed 20% of their monthly contracted hours.
The pattern: instead of exporting three CSVs and merging them, you describe the payroll-ready absence table and SheetXAI builds it from BreatheHR.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open any payroll workbook, then ask it to pull absence records for your date range. The BreatheHR integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to export a department absence and bonus summary to Excel or the BreatheHR in Excel overview.