Staff Time Off Options
Introduction
It's important to use the time off options to track your time off, because time off can be either paid or unpaid, and the Timesavr payroll reports will take this into account. You can also use time off options to limit the amount of time staff can take off in each category, and whether or not unused time is carried forward to the next year or month. Limiting time off is not required however, so even if you don't want to put hard limits on time off, you can still use these options to keep track of your staff.
Time Off Options Setup
Timesavr pre-generates a number of time off options, that you can use to track your time off. To modify these options, or create your own, go to Admin > Staff > Time Off Options. For each option, you can specify whether it is calculated in hours or days, whether it is paid or unpaid, whether the unused hours or days are carried forward, and when the next allotment is.
Unit of Measure
If your time off option is measured in days, then the staff will be able to select days from a calendar when requesting time off. Note that days are converted into hours, based on the number of hours setting on each staff member's time off options page. This is so that hours can be reported on payroll reports, even when time off is measured in days.
For some time off options, you may want to create one measured in days and one measured in hours, so that staff can choose the one that is most appropriate for them. For example, "Personal Time - Hours" and "Personal Time - Days". If they only need to take a couple of hours off one day, then they can choose the "Personal Time - Hours" option, or if they need to take multiple days off, they can choose the "Personal Time - Days" option.
Paid
If a time off option is marked as paid, then these hours will be included on staff payroll reports. Unpaid hours are not included. Paid vs Unpaid hours are also indicated with a slightly different color on the staff hours calendar report.
Carry Forward
This option applies only when the time off option is limited. (Limiting a time off option is done per staff on each staff member's time off options page). If you enable the carry forward option, that means any unused hours or days for this time off option will not be discarded, but will be retained when the next allotment is applied. By default, with this option enabled, all unused hours or days are carried forward indefinitely, but you can limit this to a single year on the Staff tab of your Settings page.
If you enable carry forward for a time off option that has a monthly allotment, then this carry forward applies to each month, rather than each year. In other words, unused hours are carried into the next month. If you also want to carry forward unused hours or days annually, for monthly allotment options, then you can enable this feature on the Staff tab of your Settings page.
Monthly carry forward values can also be capped at a maximum. This maximum is set on each staff member's time off options page.
Max Annual Allotment
The max annual allotment value applies only to monthly allotments. For example, you may set a monthly allotment of 1.5 days earned, but cap it at a maximum of 10 days annually. So, once they've earned 10 days, they will stop receiving allotments for the remainder of the 12 month period to which this applies. This 12 month period can begin either on January 1, or on the staff member's own hire date anniversary. This option is set on the Staff tab of your Settings page.
Next Allotment
The next allotment option tells Timesavr when to allot new time off hours or days to each staff. For each option this can be set to January 1, Staff anniversary or Monthly. The allotment amount is set on each individual staff member's time off options page. The staff anniversary option means that staff will receive a new allotment, each year on the day and month of their hire anniversary. The monthly option will allot a new value on the 1st day of each month. Decimal values can be used to accrue time off each month.
Staff Time Off Options
Each staff has their own Time Off Options page, where all the options you've defined in the setup are listed. By default, these options are unlimited, which means Timesavr is not tracking how many hours or days they've used, or have remaining. If you enable the Limited option, Timesavr will ask you for an initial allotment. You will also be required to specify when that allotment takes effect, and if it's a monthly allotment option, you must also enter the max annual allotment value.
Once an option is Limited, Timesavr will keep track of the number of hours or days which have been used, how many are remaining, and when the next allotment is.
Next Allotment
The next allotment is automatically calculated based on your your setup for the given option. If the option is monthly, the next allotment will always be the 1st of next month, even if the initial allotment is on a different day of the current month. If the option is set to January 1st, or staff anniversary the next allotment is calculated accordingly, for the following year. To modify the next allotment date or amount, click the pencil icon.
Total
The total hours or days includes the most recent allotment amount, plus any carry forward amount from previous years or months.
Used
The used amount is calculated based on the "Calculated used since date", which by default is the last allotment date, but can be modified by clicking on the pencil icon. The used amount is clickable and will generate a report that details the hours or days used in the calculation.
The used amount includes hours or days that have been requested to be taken off in the future, even if that request has not yet been approved.
Available
The number of hours or days available is the total minus the used amount.
History
The time off carried forward, used and available is handled automatically by Timesavr, but if you want to see how the amounts were calculated, or if you want to modify any of the values used in the calculation, you can click the history icon and see the entire history of time off allotted, carried forward and used.
Options
At the bottom of each staff member's time off options page, you can tell Timesavr how many hours is a full day for this staff. Timesavr uses this value to convert full days off to an hourly value, for reporting purposes.
You can also override the default time off approver for this staff. The default time off approver is set on the Staff tab of your Settings page, but you can override that value here. The options available are users, not staff. Users are defined in Admin > Security > Users.
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