Accrual Policies

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Accrual policies provide a mechanism for time to accrue or deposit into a time bank so employees can take time off at a later date. Commonly accrual policies are for banking time, keeping track of sick time, or vacation time. Overtime Policies and Absence Policies can also be setup to automatically deposit or withdraw time from accrual policies.

TIP: This policy must be assigned to a Policy Group before it will become active. See Setting up Policies.

See the Basic Operation section for details on viewing, adding, editing and deleting.

Accrual Policy Tab

FIELD

DESCRIPTION

Type

Select an accrual policy type from the drop-down box.

TYPE

DESCRIPTION

Calendar Based

This type is similar to the standard accrual policy, except that time deposits into the bank on a regular interval (weekly, monthly, and so on) to correspond with the length of service milestones.

FIELD	DESCRIPTION
Frequency	Your choice defines how often time is deposited into each employees accrual account. If each Pay Period is chosen, time will be accrued on the end date of each pay period. If you chose Annually, Quarterly, Monthly, or Weekly, a specific date must also be set. NOTE: Consider the common case where you choose Annual frequency and specify a date of January 1 and an employee is hired on January 2nd. In such a case, the employee will require nearly 2 years full employment to receive the accrual rate for a 1-year service milestone because they will always be one day short of a full year on the date when time deposits into their accruals. If you use the annual frequency, you should consider basing it on the Employee's Hire Date, so that the time deposits on the anniversary date of each employee. Alternatively you could consider using a Milestone Rollover Based On date that matches this frequency date.
Enable Opening Balance	Applies the first accrual amount on the employees hire date as an opening balance. However, if After Minimum Employed Days (i.e. probation period) is greater than zero then, once that number of days has elapsed, TimeTrex will deposit all time that would otherwise be accrued, starting from the employees hire date.
Prorate Initial Accrual Amount	Prorates the first accrual amount based on the employees hire date. For example if the accrual frequency applies on the 1st of each month, if the employee was hired on June 15th, their first accrual amount would occur on July 1st for the 15 of the 30 remaining days in June, or one half of the normal accrual amount. If Enable Opening Balance is enabled above then the opening balance amount would be considered the Initial Accrual Amount and therefore prorated.

Hour Based

Choosing this type is similar to the standard accrual policy, except that time deposits into the bank each day that an employee works to correspond with the length of service milestones.

Accrual Account

The Accrual Account that accrued time is deposited into.

Milestone Rollover Based On

This is the date from which the length of service defined for each milestone is calculated from.

This can be either the Employee’s Hire Date, or specific day of a particular month. If it is defined as a specific day then the length of service will be calculated as if employees were hired on that date in the year they were hired.

For example if the date specified is January 1st, then an employee hired on March 20th 2005 would have their length of service calculated from January 1st 2005 resulting in them receiving a greater length of service than they actually have. Conversely if the date specified is June 1st, then an employee hired on March 20th 2005 would have their length of service calculated from June 1st 2005, resulting in lower length of service than they actually have.

Move Excess Rollover Time To

Automatically moves any excess rollover time to another accrual account. Ideal for automatically handling "Current Year" and "Past Year" accruals in separate buckets.

Eligibility Tab

FIELD

DESCRIPTION

After Minimum Employed Days

The number of days that an employee must be employed before they become eligible to start accruing time.

Eligibility Period

Your choice defines when the employee is eligible to receive accrued time: Always Eligible, each Pay Period or Weekly.

If an Eligibility Period of each Pay Period or Weekly is selected, then the following thresholds can be set.

FIELD	DESCRIPTION
After Minimum Time	An employee can accrue time once the Minimum Time threshold is met in the Eligibility Period. For example, if the Eligibility Period is set to Weekly and the After Minimum Time is set to 40 hours, then the employee will only accrue time after 40 hours in the week.
Apply Retroactively	If checked, once the employee reaches the After Minimum Time threshold the employee accrues time for all of the Minimum Time that is specified. For example, if the After Minimum Time is set to 40 hours and the employee works 42 hours and the Apply Retroactively is checked, the employee will accrue time on 42 hours. If the employee works 39 hours, they have not met the minimum time threshold and therefore will not accrue any time.
Before Maximum Time	The employee will no longer accrue time once this Maximum Time threshold is met. Use zero for no maximum.
Contributing Shift Policy	Defines the shifts that are included in the calculation to determine if the thresholds have been met.

WARNING: If using Eligibility criteria with a Calendar-Based accrual type, it is recommended that you use a Frequency of either each Pay period or Weekly that matches the Eligibility Period.

Length Of Service Milestones Tab
FIELD	DESCRIPTION
Length of Service	The amount of time that an employee must be continuously employed (calculated from the above Milestone Rollover date), or the amount of total employee work time (total hours), after which the employee receives the accrual rate for this milestone.
Accrual Rate/Year	This field is only available for Calendar Based accrual policies and is the number of hours the employee accrues in a one year period. TimeTrex divides this total by the Frequency to calculate the number of hours that accrue per pay period, week, month, or year.
Accrual Rate/Hour	This field is only available for Hour Based accrual policies and determines the amount of time accrued for every hour the employee works.
Annual Accrual Maximum	This field is only available for Hour Based accrual policies and specifies the maximum amount of time that can be accrued per year, regardless of the Accrual Maximum Balance below. Once an employee has reached this maximum amount they will no longer accrue time until the next year, even if they happen to use time from their accrual.
Accrual Maximum Balance	This sets the upper limit for the balance that employees are allowed to have in their accrual account. After an employee reaches this limit, TimeTrex will no longer accrue time until the balance falls below this limit. This is used as a cap to keep employees from accruing too much time, and motivates them to take time off before they reach the cap. You should use a value at least equal to or greater than the Accrual Rate/Year; otherwise, the employee can never earn the full accrual rate.
Annual Maximum Rollover	The maximum amount of time that can roll over into the next year. The adjustment occurs on the date for Milestone Rollover Based On. For example, if the Accrual Rate/Year is set to 40 hours and the Annual Maximum Rollover is set to 20 hours, an adjustment entry is automatically made to reduce their accrual to 20 hours when the employee reaches the milestone rollover date with more than 20 hours in their accrual. If you want all time that accrues to rollover into the next year, simply set this value to something greater than (or equal to) Accrual Total Maximum. A value of zero will result in no time being rolled over.

Employee Settings Tab
FIELD	DESCRIPTION
Length of Service Date	Overrides the employees Hire Date used to determine their Length of Service.
Length of Service Modifier	Multiplier of the Length of Service value for each Milestone. Used to increase or decrease the length of service required to hit each milestone. For example a Length of Service Modifier of 0.50 would cut each milestone length of service required to hit that milestone in half.
Accrual Rate Modifier	Multiplier of the Accrual Rate value for each Milestone. This can be used to better handle individual accrual settings on a per employee basis, similar to a full-time equivalency rate. For example if the milestone is designed for full-time employees and set to accrue 80 hours (2 weeks) of vacation time each year, if you have a part-time employee that normally works half what a full-time employee works and therefore only accrues 1 week per year, you would set this value to 0.50, thereby multiplying the accrual rate by half.
Accrual Total Maximum Modifier	Multiplier of the Accrual Total Maximum value for each Milestone.
Annual Maximum Rollover Modifier	Multiplier of the Annual Maximum Rollover value for each Milestone.