Time Off Policies control how sick, vacation, and PTO (paid time off) hours are earned and awarded to employees. To set up or manage these policies, navigate to Settings, then Time Off Policies. This article covers how to add a new policy, edit an existing one, and deactivate a policy you no longer use.
Add a New Policy
To add a new policy, select New Policy in the top-right corner, then complete each field.
Give the policy a name, such as PTO.
Select the Type – either Vacation or Sick.
Select the Earning Method – either Accrual or Lump Sum. Accrual means the time off is awarded based on the average number of hours worked. Lump Sum means that if the policy grants 40 hours per year, the employee earns the full 40 hours as long as they meet the average-hours-worked threshold.
Set the Award Frequency – how often the time off runs, calculates, and awards to employees. Choose the employee's Anniversary Date or Each Pay Period. Anniversary Date means the employee receives a lump-sum amount of time off when they hit their anniversary. Each Pay Period means the employee earns a small amount each pay cycle. If Lump Sum is the Earning Method, you can also select On a Specific Month/Day as the Award Frequency.
2. Set the Look Back Period – how far back the system looks when calculating the average hours worked. If the Award Frequency is set to Anniversary Date, the system automatically looks back 48 weeks.
3. Set the Minimum Threshold – the minimum number of hours worked in a week required to earn time off. For example, if an employee must be full time to earn time off, you might set the threshold to 32 hours.
4. Set the Maximum Carry Over – how many hours employees are allowed to carry from one year to the next. If this is set to 0, any time off remaining in the employee's bank resets to 0 on their anniversary date.
5. Set the Maximum Allowed – the most any employee can ever have at one time. Calculate this by adding the carry-over amount to the maximum hours that can be earned in a year.
6. Set Accrual on PTO and Accrual on Overtime. When toggled on, these settings allow the accrual of benefit hours to include the employee's overtime hours and PTO hours.
7. Add the time off earned per anniversary in the final section.
The Thru Year is the year of employment the range applies through. Depending on how the policy is written, you can use the Look Back Period and the Thru Year together to set different starting periods.
For example, if no time off is awarded until after the first year, set the Look Back Period to 50 weeks (52 weeks in a year minus one pay cycle). Once the employee completes year one (through the Look Back Period), they qualify for 40 hours per year.
In this example, the Thru Year means that once the employee completes their full 4th year of employment, they move up to the next policy tier.
You can add multiple ranges by selecting the Add Range button or the Split button, then manually update the Thru Year and the yearly amount awarded for each range.
If an employee's anniversary is higher than the largest Thru Year listed, their award amount matches that of the highest range you set. |
Edit or Deactivate a Policy
To edit a policy, click the policy on the left side, make your changes, and save.
If a policy is no longer active, select the triple-dot menu in the top-right corner and choose Deactivate. This prevents the policy from being added to any user profile going forward.
IF PRO TIP: Adding the time off policy is only half of ensuring time off is awarded correctly. When creating user profiles in Settings, then User, make sure the time off policy is added to each user who should qualify for it. For help with that step, see the article "How do I add PTO Balances?" |