Absence and Vacation | Absence accrual

Absence accrual offers extensive absence and vacation/PTO recording options in Sage People by defining groups of settings you link to policies or employment records.

We call each group of settings an absence accrual pattern. They use rules to define parameters for accruals and limits for each type of absence recorded in your organization.

Rich functionality includes:

• Policy linking - lets you tailor absence management to country, region, or other organizational grouping

• Employment record linking - enables bespoke absence management for individual roles while retaining generic settings for the rest of the organization

• Inheritance - lets you link settings to those in another pattern

• Different rule sets for different groups of employees based on the length of time they’ve worked for your organization

• Customization options for individuals through absence adjustments you apply to a single employment record

• Access to the detailed calculation of each type of absence for each Team Member over time. This is through an Accrual Log button

• Specific options for parental leave associated with the birth or adoption of a child. Enables close mapping to employment law requirements as given for many countries

• An option to defer entitlement to an absence type. So team members can earn an accrual in one year and draw against it during the next. Common in some countries, such as Belgium and France, for vacation entitlement

• For each type of absence:

  • Separate accrual recording

  • Separate limit and accrual parameters

  • Separate start of year dates

• Integrated alerts for triggering when the value of an absence type exceeds defined levels for:

  • A single instance of that absence

  • The cumulative total duration over a defined time period

  • The number of occurrences over a defined time period

• Evidence triggers that you can set as required to ensure absences are fully sanctioned

• Absence request blocking when team members will exceed a limit you define, if you permit the request

Set up absence accrual

1. Configure settings for absence accrual using Absence and Vacation | Configuration options.

2. If you want to use the Create Absence Accrual wizard and related components, add them to page layouts first.

3. Review and update profile and permission set access for users.

4. Create one or more absence accrual patterns to link to policies or employment records. You can: 

   • Import an absence accrual pattern exported from your org, from another org, or a generic sample available for Sage People implementations

   • Create one or more absence accrual patterns from scratch

5. Create absence accrual rules associated with the pattern:

   • Using the simplified Create Absence Accrual wizard

   • Entering values directly to the Absence Accrual Rule page

6. Define seniority accrual and limit parameters for the absence accrual rules. You can:

   • Use Seniority Settings

   • Clone existing seniorities

   • Define the seniority from scratch

7. Ensure you have the same absence reasons in the Reason field and in the absence accrual rules.

8. Assign the absence accrual patterns to team members through policies or employment records.

9. Review the standard action events, update if necessary, or create more action events: 

   • Review standard action events

   • Use the list of available triggers and the standard action event setup steps to create new action events

10. Customize a pattern to reflect the needs of specific employment contracts by applying absence adjustments.

An absence accrual pattern completely replaces all the individual options for Absence and Vacation/PTO in the policy.

When set up, absence accrual works transparently to enable absence recording and management through WX and the HR Manager portal. The HR Manager portal includes the Accrual Log button to let you see how you calculate all accruals over time.

Other features

In use, absence accrual offers several extra features including:

• Time in lieu recording and management

  Managers and HR Managers can award time in lieu as an alternative to overtime or for other discretionary purposes. The system records total time in lieu you award to a Team Member separately. It becomes the first pool of vacation call on when a team member enters a vacation request:

  

  You can change the default deduction order using the Enhanced Absence Features.

• Automatic carry over calculation, and automatic carry over expiry after a number of months you define

• Easy definition of increasing entitlement with seniority, with fully automatic application