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Getting Started - Setting Up Time Off

You can find time off settings through:

Administration > Company > Settings > Timeoff settings (Global)

This is where you enter your time off settings for your organization. If you have sites or countries with different rules, you should enter the settings which cover the majority of employees there. "Site level time off settings" for those locations where the settings are different.

Most fields are explanatory, but here are some indications we would like to add on:

Holiday Year

  • Holiday year - If your holiday year starts on a set day then you should leave this at 'Set date' and enter the date in "Start of holiday year". If each employee's holiday year starts on the anniversary of their start date then choose 'Employee start date'.
  • Start of Holiday Year - If the Holiday Year field is set to 'Set Date', enter the date in this field.
  • Carryover days and expiry date - If you want to allow employees to carry over days from one holiday year to the next, you can enter the maximum number of days and the date on which they must be used. If you leave these blank, carryover will not be available - if there are no maximum days and or no expiry date, simply enter values and dates which will never be reached such as 400 days and date year of 2030 for example.
  • Expiry date for carryover days - This field allows you to establish when carryover expires within your organization.
  • Include Carryover in Summary Type - If there has been carryover allocated to an employee and this option is set to 'Yes' with a Summary Type has been created, the carry-over can be included in this type.

Self Service

  • Allow employees to enter time off days/hours - This will enable employees to add time off for themselves if this is set to 'Yes'. If this is set to 'No', only managers will be able to add time off for employees
  • Allow employees to specify AM/PM for half-day bookings - This will allow employees to specify if they require time off in the AM or PM if this option is set to 'Yes'. Otherwise, they can only book full days.
  • Allow employees to request more days than allowance - If an employee only has five days left, for example, this option will allow them to book more than 5 days at one time if set to 'Yes'.
  • Apply time off booking rules - If this is set to 'Yes', rules can be applied as to how many people can be off at the same time.
  • Allow employees to trade time off - If 'Yes OPEN' is selected, employees will be able to buy or sell time off allowances and also book the time associated with it.
  • Show employee allowance breakdown on home page - If this option is set to 'Yes', the breakdown of the employees' allowances can be viewed on their homepage.

Accrual

  • Time off allowances accrual - If this setting is set to 'Yes', employee allowances will be accrued based on the time which has passed since their year start date, rather than having the whole annual allowance available from the year start date. This is not the same as 'Balance Pro-Rated' which occurs by default when an employee starts mid-way through the holiday year.
  • Maximum Accrual value - Here the limit of what can be accrued throughout the business can be established. By default, the length of service time off types is not accrued.
  • Accrue length of service types - By default, the length of service types is not accrued. Once the employee has earned their length of service leave, they can see and request the whole amount. This option allows you to accrue length of service leave in the same way as other leave types with allowances as per the above setting.
  • Time off in lieu - If you are using timesheets and you wish employee overtime to be accrued as time off in lieu, set this to 'Yes'.
  • Allow employees to request time off in lieu allowance - If this setting is set to 'Yes', employees will be able to request hours to be banked against time off in lieu which they can then book off as per normal time off.
  • Timesheets overtime auto accrue time off in lieu - If this setting is set to 'Yes', any overtime added using timesheets (i.e more hours than contracted) will create a corresponding TOIL value.

Company Holiday

  • Company holidays mandatory - If you want the dates you enter as Company Holidays to be mandatory to employees and therefore not be counted in the calculation of holiday duration then set this to 'Yes'. If you do, ensure you enter the employee allowances excluding those mandatory days.
  • Company holidays mandatory - starters mid-year - If you enable mandatory company holidays, you can decide how you determine entitlement to mandatory holidays.

Display Settings

  • Round-up time off balances - By default, employee allowances are not rounded in any way. You can define how employee allowances are rounded (if required) by editing this setting.
  • Availability - Set thresholds to be used within the availability module to display the red/green employee count flags for attendance. "Availability - RED threshold" allows you to set the lower value for the employee count flag and the "Availability - GREEN threshold" allows you to set the higher value.
  • Time off no allowances - If this is selected to 'Yes', this changes how the allowance doughnut is displayed. Rather than the doughnut showing the days taken, booked, etc. as a percentage of the total allowance, the doughnut will always show as 100% with segments made up of the types you specify in the time off types set up. Please note that you will still need to ensure you do not have any time off types with allowances allocated to them.

General Settings

  • Pro-rate allowances upon mid-year changes - If you select 'Yes', time off allowances will be pro-rated based on the allowance change values, for example, if the employee has 25 days for 6 months then change to 19 days for 6 months this would display as 22 days. 
  • Service leave - pro-rate option - When using the length of service leave for an employee who works part-time, you can choose to pro-rate their service leave by either their FTE or their working days.
  • Auto-populate allowances based on-site and job title - If this option is set to 'Yes', the time-off allowances marked as auto-populate will be populated using the corresponding value for the employee site and job title. The ability to modify this time-off allowance will be lost once this setting is enabled. This uses the same setting as 'service leave pro-rate for part-time staff'
  • Time off bulk approve - If 'Yes' is selected, manager/approvers will be able to bulk approve time off from the listing page. Please note that this will mean it is possible for manager and approvers to approve time off without ever actually viewing them
  • Auto archive leaver time off and training

Absence Settings

  • Long term definition - This will be what your definition of what makes an absence long term. Anything equal to or greater than this figure will be marked as long term.
  • Absence rate period (months) - What is the period of absence in months?
  • Return to work form - If you wish to use your own return to work form instead of the system default, this can be selected here.
  • Self-certification form - If you wish to use your own self-certification form instead of the system default, this can be selected here.
  • Return to work and self-certification - daily email until completed - By default, an email is sent to the employee's manager on the day of the employee return only. Having this set to 'Yes' will mean the email is sent every day until the relevant process is completed. 
  • Return to work trigger duration - The duration as to when a return to work needs to be completed by can be entered here.
  • Self-certification trigger duration - The duration as to when a self-certification needs to be completed by can be entered here.

Company Defaults

  • Working days - Set the normal working days for your workforce. This can be overridden at an employee level for those who work weekends, for example, but this is used in time off calculations to exclude weekends, for example, when calculating the duration of a request.
  • Standard working day in hours - The standard number of working hours can be entered here. 
  • Work week begins on - What days does your working week begin on? 
  • Variable hours percentage allowance - If any of your employees work variable hours/zero-hours contracts, this is the percentage allocated to time-off for each hour worked and tracked via timesheets or time tracking
  • Average hours worked calculation period (weeks) - This field allows you to specify the duration over which you wish to determine the number of hours to deduct for each day time-off booked. If this is not specified, this will default to 13 weeks.

Once you have set your time off settings, you should add time off types though this is not necessary for the initial setup of the system.

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