Balance Accrual Feature

Balances, such as FMLA, Sick, or Vacation, refer to the categories that time off can count against in the application. A balance may contain hours, occurrences, or days. For example, a vacation balance may consist of hours while a floating holiday balance consists of one or more occurrences.

Balances are updated when:

  1. Events with Leave Type Codes are posted via the ATTENDANCE service.

  2. Events with Leave Type Codes are approved via a Time Off Request.

  3. Events with Leave Type Codes are posted via the Add Elapsed button on the web timecard or a client terminal.

    The following Event Types can draw from balances: ATTENDANCE:HOLIDAY, ATTENDANCE:SICK, ATTENDANCE:TIME_OFF, and ATTENDANCE:VACATION.

  4. A supervisor or administrator updates a person’s balances in the Leave tab of the Employee form.

  5. The ACCRUAL service uses the settings in the person’s Leave Policy to create and update a person’s balance records.

  6. An Accrual Import creates or updates a person’s balance records.

See Also:

Configurations for Balance Accruals

Accrual Import

Synchronize Leave Balances in Shop Floor Time and Costpoint

Partial Year Prorated Accrual

 

Configurations for Balance Accruals

In order for balances to be drawn from and updated, the following must be configured:

Configuration Step

Where to Configure

Notes

Ensure that you have Leave Type Codes available.

 

Leave Type  Code form

You can use this form to add and delete leave type codes.

Associate one or more Leave Type Codes with an Event.

Leave Type tab in the Events form

The following Event Types can draw from balances: ATTENDANCE:HOLIDAY, ATTENDANCE:SICK, ATTENDANCE:TIME_OFF, and ATTENDANCE:VACATION.

The Leave Type Code you add to an event is the balance that the time off counts against. If an event is configured to draw from more than one balance, the Leave Type Code you list on top is the balance that the system will deduct from until the balance runs out. Once it has depleted the balance, the system will deduct from the next leave type code in the list, and so on.

 

Make sure balances are enabled in the Attendance Policy.

Balances tab in the Attendance Policy form

If you want balances to be drawn when events are posted via the Add Elapsed button on the Web timecard or a client terminal, you must enable Balances in the person’s Attendance Policy. To do so, check the Balances Enabled box in the Balances tab of the Attendance Policy form.

 

Assign the Attendance Policy (with Balances Enabled) to the applicable persons.

Employee Setting

Employee Group Setting

System Settings

Assign to single person: Employee Setting

Assign to Employee Group: Employee Group Setting

Assign to all users: System Settings

An Employee setting overrides an Employee Group Setting, which overrides System Settings.

 

Define a Leave Policy to determine how and when the balances should be accrued and can be used to offset employee time off.

 

Leave Policy form

The ACCRUAL service uses the settings in the person’s Leave Policy, which also includes Accrual Rulesets, to create and add time to person balance records.

Assign the Leave Policy to the applicable persons.

Employee Setting

Employee Group Setting

Assign to single user: Employee Setting

Assign to Employee Group: Employee Group Setting

An Employee setting overrides an Employe Group Setting.

 

Ensure that the person's Time Off Request Policy has time off events available.

 

Time Off Request Event tab in Time Off Request Policy

The System Default Time Off Request Policy includes SICK and VACATION as valid time off events. You can modify the default policy. It is assigned on the System Settings level.

Manually configure a person's balances.

 

Balance tab on the Employee form.

You can add, modify, and delete a person’s balances once you have Leave Type Codes available.

 

Accrual Import

You can import accrual balances for a specific person, leave type code, and balance year.

  1. Use the Import Definition form to create an import with the Accrual context.

    The required fields are Leave Type Code, Balance Year, and Employee/Person Number.

    You can also include the balance value as well as any carry over hours, or earned hours.

  2. Create a .csv file with the persons and leave type codes you want to import.

    Make sure this file is located in the Source Folder you specified when defining your Import Definition.

  3. Configure an instance of the IMPORT_FILES service that includes your Accrual import.

  4. Run this instance of the IMPORT_FILES service to process your Accrual import.

    You can run the IMPORT_FILES service via a schedule, or you can run it immediately using the Service Monitor form, or the Schedule Immediately button in the Import Definition form.

The imported balances will be visible in the Balance tab of the Employee form.

 

Configure the Accrual Import to Update Only Earned Hours

If you want to use the Accrual Import to update only the Earned Hours in a particular balance, you need to include the Balance Load Type field set to INC_EARNED.

  1. Select your Accrual Import in the Import Definition form.

  2. In the Record Value Map tab, click Add.

  3. Select the Field Name Balance Load Type – FI_BALANCE_LOAD_TYPE.

  4. For the Field Value Type, select Static.

  5. In the Field Value box, type INC_EARNED.

  6. Click Save.

When you run this import, if there is an existing record for the leave type code you are importing, then only the Earned Hours in that balance record will be updated. The Earned Hours in the balance record will be increased by the amount of Earned Hours in the import file. No other values in the balance record will be updated by the import.

If there is no existing record for the leave type code you are importing, then all the values in the import file will be added as a new balance record.

 

Synchronize Leave Balances in Shop Floor Time and Costpoint

Shop Floor Time is the system of records for Used Paid balances and Costpoint is the system of records for accrued balances.

Shop Floor Time sends Used Paid balances to Costpoint as they occur, including the Used Paid balances of current and future pay periods. However, Costpoint only approves Used Paid balances from the prior pay period and not current or future pay periods. Therefore, when Costpoint sends the updated Earned balances back to Shop Floor Time, it does not account for the Used Paid balances from the current and future periods that were already sent by Shop Floor Time. As a result, the balances in the two systems can be out of sync.

To prevent discrepancies between the balances in Shop Floor Time and Costpoint, the following configuration needs to be made:

With the above configuration, the balance values in Shop Floor Time will be set as follows: