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Guide to Time Off Follow

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Kristina Hofreiter
  • Updated

Whether you call it time off, PTO, employee benefits, or accruals, managing leave is essential for any business. uAttend helps you easily track vacation, sick, and other earned time off, using customizable accruals for each employee. This ensures accurate tracking based on the hours they have worked. Employees can also request time off through the system, making it easier for managers to approve and track leave.

This comprehensive guide will walk you through how to set up and manage both accruals and time off requests, with step-by-step instructions to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Use the table of contents below to skip to specific sections or click links within this article to access how-to articles, troubleshooting help, downloadable resources, videos, and more.

In this article:

 

Accrual Overview

Accruals, often referred to as benefits or Paid Time Off (PTO), are used to set up vacation, sick pay, and other hours that accumulate over time. They can be configured to accumulate over time or be set as a fixed value, depending on your company's policies. 

Only employee profiles support accruals. If you use uAttend payroll, accruals are available for Hourly and non-exempt salaried employees who have timecards.

Accruals are enabled at the employee level in the Time Off section of their profile and are influenced by the Accrual Rounding setting configured at the account level.

 

Rounding Accruals

Accrual Rounding is set at the account level, not on the employee profile. This means the rounding rule you establish will apply to all employees within your account uniformly. You can specify how your accruals will be rounded - whether to the nearest tenth (0.1), hundredth (0.01), thousandth (0.001), or ten-thousandth (0.0001).

Why does the rounding matter? If your accrual rate is 0.0577 hours per hour worked, rounding to the nearest thousandth would give the employee 2 hours and 18 minutes for every 40 hours worked. However, rounding to the nearest hundredth (0.06) would give 2 hours and 24 minutes - a 6 minutes difference in a 40-hour period that adds up over time for each employee. You will want to choose the Accrual Rounding option that fits best according to your established company policies.

 

To configure the Accrual Rounding setting:

  1. Navigate to the General section in the Settings tab of the web portal (only account administrators can access this tab).
  2. Edit the Accrual Rounding setting and select your preferred option from the dropdown.
  3. Click Save to save your changes.

 

Setting Up Accruals

When setting up Accruals, an account administrator or a supervisor (with the necessary employee edit permissions enabled) can enter the necessary details in the Time Off section of an employee's profile. You will need to set at minimum the:

  • Start date
  • Starting value
  • Accrual rate

For a more in-depth walkthrough, check out our article on Setting Up Accruals.

 

Accrual Pay Codes

uAttend uses standard pay codes for vacation hours, sick hours, and other hours:

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

These cannot be changed in the portal, but you can adjust their appearance in exported reports through the Export Settings.

 

Add Benefit Time to an Employee Timecard

Even without a time off request, you can manually add vacation, sick, or other hours to an employee's timecard. Simply:

  1. Add a punch entry. 
  2. Set the punch type to Benefit. 
  3. Select the appropriate Benefit Type (Vacation, Sick, Other). 
  4. Enter the number of hours and note (optional) and Save. 

If the time off request is unpaid, enter "0" and leave a note.

 

Time Off Requests Overview

Employees can request paid or unpaid time off through the system, but this feature must be enabled by an account administrator. Once activated and the necessary settings enabled, employees can submit time off requests through the mobile app or web portal.

 

Setting Up Time Off Requests

  1. Enable Time Off Requests: This setting is available under in the Settings tab of the account and must be enabled by an account Administrator.
  2. Determine the Approval Level: Decide whether administrators, supervisors, or both must approve time off requests. If both are required, the supervisor must approve the request before an administrator. 
  3. Configure Notification Settings: Email or text notifications can be set to alert when a time-off request is submitted through the web portal. If using text notifications, you will need to enable uText. Supervisors or administrators can approve or deny requests directly from these notifications. Be sure to add the correct email or phone number for the supervisor/administrator in their profile.

For a more in-depth walkthrough, check out our article on Setting Up Time Off Requests.

Note: Time off requests will always apply to the employee's home department.

 

Submitting Time Off Requests

Employees can submit a time off request through the web portal or mobile app if the necessary permissions have been enabled. For them to do so, they must be added to the account with a valid email address and invited to create a username and password if they do not have one already set up. After which, they can log in using your custom company login URL. Notifications are sent when an employee submits a time off request through the web portal. 

When submitting a request, employees will need to:

  • Set the date range.
  • Enter the amount of time requested per day.
  • Specify whether the request is for paid or unpaid leave.

Follow these links for instructions on submitting time off:

 

Managing and Approving Time Off Requests

Once time off requests are enabled, administrators and supervisors can manage requests from the employee's profile and the Time Off Request widget. Time off requests can be edited prior to being approved. Once approved, all time off must be edited from the employee's timecard.

 

Manual Time Off Entries

If employees do not submit time off requests, an account administrator or supervisor with the necessary permissions can configure time off requests for an employee in the Time Off section of their profile. 

 

Time Off Request Widget

In addition to approving Time off Requests from a text or email notification, administrators and supervisors can approve them from their dashboard. The Time Off Request widget displays a list of pending requests, upcoming approved requests, and allows administrators and supervisors to approve or deny requests with ease. On the widget, hover over the request to click the checkmark to confirm the request or the X to deny the request. Additionally, you can click on the request itself to make edits, set it as unpaid, and approve or deny the request.

 

Tracking Accruals and Time Off

Easily track employees' time off using the Time off Report. This report shows both used and remaining time off by category (vacation, sick, other) and can be filtered by department, employee, time off type, and approval status.

Additionally, you can also enable the Display Benefit Hours setting on the employee's profile to show real-time accruals directly on their timecard. 

For a quick overview of employees currently on leave, check out the On Leave dashboard widget.

 

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