Understanding Vacation and Holiday Policies

[toones]

I am having a hard time understanding how vacation and holidays work.
The way I understand it is:

Vacation: If you have an absence policy, and an employee does not clock in, the absence policy is going to execute, and deduct time from whichever accrual policy is specified in the applicable absence policy. Is this correct? If an employee works only 6 of their scheduled 8 hours, will it execute the absence policy for the remaining 2 hours?

If you do not have an absence policy in place (or assigned), will it just not show any hours for that day?

I noticed that if an absence request is submitted and approved, it does not show up as a scheduled absence in the employees schedule. Is this by design? I also noticed that if there is a holiday it is not showing up on the employees schedule. Is this by design also?

Holidays: When an employee is absent and a holiday policy is in effect for that employee, is the holiday policy first checked, and if that day is a holiday it is recorded on the timesheet as such. Is that the logic?

Is there a way to set the system up so that an employee can enter their time for holidays directly? I would want to do these because we have convoluted policies for the amount we pay for holidays. As a workaround, and only if the previous isn't possible, is it possible to set up a holiday policy that is static? In other words, set up Holiday Policy A so it says whoever it is assigned to receives 1.2 hours for each holiday?

Same question as above, but for vacation time?

[shaunw]

Vacation: If you have an absence policy, and an employee does not clock in, the absence policy is going to execute, and deduct time from whichever accrual policy is specified in the applicable absence policy. Is this correct? If an employee works only 6 of their scheduled 8 hours, will it execute the absence policy for the remaining 2 hours?

If you do not have an absence policy in place (or assigned), will it just not show any hours for that day?

Absence policies do not automatically "execute" for vacation scenarios unless you have a schedule policy with a defined "undertime absence policy", and the employee is scheduled to work with the proper schedule policy selected and they don't work at least the scheduled hours.

If all of the above criteria are met, then TimeTrex will automatically insert absence time matching that of the schedule, or matching the difference between the schedule and the worked time. If this absence policy is mapped to an accrual policy, then the time will be withdrawn from their accrual policy too.

If no "undertime absence policy" is defined, then TimeTrex won't show any hours for that day, correct.

I noticed that if an absence request is submitted and approved, it does not show up as a scheduled absence in the employees schedule. Is this by design? I also noticed that if there is a holiday it is not showing up on the employees schedule. Is this by design also?

Yes, absence requests are often much too complex to handle automatically. Once a supervisor authorizes a request he or she needs to manually carry out the requested action, such as modify the schedule, or timesheet accordingly.

Holidays: When an employee is absent and a holiday policy is in effect for that employee, is the holiday policy first checked, and if that day is a holiday it is recorded on the timesheet as such. Is that the logic?

Correct. If the holiday policy is in effect and holidays are properly defined for that policy TimeTrex will automatically insert a holiday absence. For recurring holidays assigned to a holiday policy, TimeTrex only ever activates recurring holidays approx. 60days before the holiday date. So for instance if its Oct 15th, you won't see Christmas on an employees schedule until around Oct 25th. You won't see any hours placed on the employees timesheet for the holiday until the day of the holiday. You can of course manually add holidays to holiday policies at any time. (Admin -> Policies -> Holiday Policy -> Holidays)

Is there a way to set the system up so that an employee can enter their time for holidays directly? I would want to do these because we have convoluted policies for the amount we pay for holidays. As a workaround, and only if the previous isn't possible, is it possible to set up a holiday policy that is static? In other words, set up Holiday Policy A so it says whoever it is assigned to receives 1.2 hours for each holiday?

Yes, you give employees Add/Edit absence permissions so they can manually add/edit their own absence time. This isn't just for holidays though, its for any day and any absence policy.

What sort of holiday rules do you have? Our holiday policy is pretty advanced as it is, but you can define a minimum/maximum number of hours to give employees for a holiday. So if you want to define a static number, simply set that number as both the min and max setting.

[MichelleM]

This is probably one of those "not really stupid but I'm going to ask it anyway" questions: So if a holiday has passed (like US Labor Day) but you're still within the pay period (like we are), the holiday policy won't automatically insert the absence for it into an employee timesheet? I can see why ... but just making sure. Or do I just need to wait a bit for the cron jobs to catch it up?

Oh - never mind. As Admin, I selected the "Recalculate employee" action and the holiday hours got put in.

Thanks - this thread is wonderfully informative!
Michelle

[shaunw]

Correct, anytime a holiday is added "after the fact", timesheets need to be re-calculated for the time period that you want to the changes to take effect.

This goes for ANY policy change as well, TimeTrex will never automatically recalculate policies retroactively, that is something that needs to be manually done for each employee and for each pay period.

[Nox]

Does that mean that "recalculate company" will recalculate all employees at once during that pay period?

[shaunw]

Yes, it will recalculate all employees for that pay period.