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Setting Up Accruals: Vacation, Sick, and Other Benefit Hours Follow

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Kristina Hofreiter
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Accruals are essential for tracking and managing benefit hours, such as vacation, sick time, and other paid time off (PTO) for employees and can be configured many ways depending on the needs of your company. Whether your company requires an employee to be employed for 90 days before accruing or begin accruing immediately upon hire, accruals can be customized to reflect your company's policies. This article will provide detailed instructions on how to set up accruals for your employees, ensuring accurate time-off accumulation based on your company's needs. 

In this article:

 

Benefit Categories

uAttend offers three accrual categories:

  • Vacation (VAC)
  • Sick (SIC)
  • Other (OTH)

These categories are predefined cannot be modified within the system. However, when exporting reports, you can customize the column headers to match your company's specific terminology. 

 

Set Your Accrual Rounding Option 

How accruals are calculated depends on the Accrual Rounding setting, which is account-wide. This setting determines the precision for rounding, which can be configured to the nearest:

  • Tenths (0.1)
  • Hundredths (0.01) 
  • Thousandths (0.001)
  • Ten-thousandths (0.001).

For more details on accrual rounding, check out our Guide to Time Off.

 

Configure the Accrual Settings 

Accruals are only available for employee profiles and are configured per employee in the Time Off section of their profile. If you use uAttend payroll, they are available for hourly and non-exempt salaried employees who have timecards.

 

Follow these steps to set up an employee's accruals:

 

1. Select a start date:

Choose a past, current, or future date as the start date for the accruals. The start date determines when the accruals begin and when hours become available to the employee. If employees accrue hours immediately upon hire, enter their hire date. If accruals begin after a period, such as after 90 days, enter the date for when accruals should begin.  

Tip: If accruals reset annually (such as on the first day of a new year), remember to manually update the start date each year. Before making any changes, we recommend exporting a Time Off Report for accurate record-keeping, ensuring all accrued and used time is properly documented.

 

2. Set the starting value if applicable:

You have the option to enter a starting value for vacation, sick, or other time off hours. For instance, if your employees start with a specific amount of vacation time or if they have a set value each year and do not accrue, enter that value. If there is no starting balance, set the starting value to "0".

 

3. Set the accrual rate:

The accrual rate determines how time off hours accumulate. You can configure this rate in several ways:

  • Per Hour: Accrue time off per a specific number of hours worked, such as 'per 1 hour' or 'per 8 hours' worked. For example, if the employee earns 1 hour of vacation for every 8 hours worked, you would set the rate as shown in the image below: 

    uAttend Accruals Rate Per Hour.png
     
  • Per Week: Accrue a set number of hours each week based on the work week defined in your account settings.
  • Per Month: Accrue time on a monthly basis.
  • Per Pay Period: Accrue time based on your company's pay period, aligning with your payroll schedule. 

 

4. Select whether to including overtime:

By default, only regular hours are counted toward accruals. However, you can include overtime hours (OT1, OT2, and weekly OT) in the calculation by enabling this setting.

 

5. Set a cap:

A cap is the maximum number of accrued hours an employee can hold at any given time. If an employee reaches this cap, they will continue to accrue hours in the background but will not have access to those hours until their balance falls below the cap. Once the balance decreases, the accrued hours will be made available up to the cap limit. 

 

How Accruals are Triggered

  • Per Hour: Accrues only when the employee records punches.
  • Per Week, Per Month, Per Pay Period: Accrues automatically and does not require any employee punches.

 

View Accruals on the Employee's Timecard

You can configure accrued hours to display directly on the employee's timecard, offering a real-time view of accrued and used hours. Enable the Display Benefit Hours option in the employee's profile to allow anyone with access to the employee's timecard to view their accrued hours. 

 

Manage Time Off Requests

You can enable Time Off Requests to allow administrators, supervisors, and employees to manage time-off requests efficiently. Approved time off will be added automatically to employee timecards and deducted from their available accrued time.

Alternatively, if you do not wish to use the Time Off Request feature, benefit hours can be manually added to an employee's timecard.

For more detailed information on accruals and time off requests, be sure to check out our comprehensive Guide to Time Off.

 

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