Absence and Vacation | Absence accrual

Absence accrual offers extensive absence and vacation/PTO recording options by defining groups of settings that can be linked to policies or employment records. Each group of settings, called an absence accrual pattern, uses rules to define parameters for accruals and limits for each type of absence recorded in your organization. Rich functionality includes:

• Policy linking, enabling absence management to be tailored to country, region, or other organizational grouping.

• Employment record linking, enabling bespoke absence management for individual roles while retaining generic settings for the rest of the organization.

• Inheritance, enabling settings to be linked to those in another pattern.

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

• Customization options for individuals through absence adjustments applied to a single employment record.

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

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

• An option to defer entitlement to an absence type, so an accrual is earned in one year and drawn against during the next. Commonly used 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 can be set as required to ensure absences are fully sanctioned.

• Absence request blocking when a defined limit would be exceeded if the request were permitted.

Set up absence accrual

To 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 needed, or create additional 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 enable you to see how all accruals are calculated over time.

Other features

In use, absence accrual offers a number of 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. Total time in lieu awarded to a Team Member is separately recorded and becomes the first pool of vacation to be called on when a vacation request is entered:

  

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

• Automatic carry over calculation, and automatic carry over expiry after a defined number of months.

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