Leave

Leave is two screens of setup, one run, and a handful of request screens. The setup is where almost all the thinking goes, because the policy is held in one place and every balance in the company comes out of it.

The order is unusual, and worth saying first: the leave types and the leave group come before the people, because a person cannot be placed without a policy profile and a policy profile names a leave group. The entitlement comes after the people, because an entitlement belongs to somebody.

The order

1. Leave Type. The kinds of leave: annual, casual, sick, and whatever else the client gives.
2. Leave Group. One policy, with a line per leave type saying how much and on what terms.
3. The people, and their Employee Policy Profile, which is where the leave group is named.
4. Leave Allocation Run. The run that puts the year's quota on everybody.
5. Employee Leave Entitlement. What one person actually holds, and where you correct it by hand.

Leave Type

A Leave Type is one kind of leave. The screen holds what is true of that kind of leave everywhere in the company, which is deliberately not the quota: the same kind of leave can be given in different amounts to different grades, and that is the leave group's job.

What is on the type:

• Leave Unit, which is what durations the type may be taken in: full day only, full or half, or full, half and short. A sick leave half day is normal. A hajj leave half day is not.
• Short Leave Hours, Standard Day Hours and Short Leaves Per Month, where short leave is allowed.
• Paid Leave, which is how leave without pay is distinguished from the rest.
• Leave Category, which groups the type for reporting and for the rules that care about the kind of leave rather than the particular type. Annual, casual, sick, maternity, paternity, hajj, compensatory, leave without pay, other.
• Comp Off Leave, which marks the type that time off in lieu is granted as.
• Attachment Required After (Days), so that a sick leave of more than two days demands a certificate and one of a single day does not.
• Gender Eligibility and Marital Status Eligibility, for maternity and the like.
• Minimum Service (Months) and Maximum Times In Service, for leave a new joiner cannot take yet, and for leave a person gets once in a career.
• Calendar Colour, which is only cosmetic, and genuinely useful once a manager is looking at a month of his team.

Key the types the client's leave policy document names, and no more. A type nobody is entitled to is clutter on every list in the company.

Leave Group

A Leave Group is one complete leave policy. Its lines are the leave types that policy gives, and each line carries that type's terms.

This is where a client's leave rules actually live, so expect to spend real time on it with the client's HR head, and expect to come back to it twice.

On each line

• Quota, the number of days a year, and Quota Balance Limit.
• Accrual Method: yearly, monthly, or yearly in monthly instalments. The difference between the last two matters more than it looks. Yearly in monthly instalments means the year's figure is handed out a slice per month and the whole lot lapses together at the end of the leave year. Monthly means the quota is per month and each month's grant lapses a month later.
• Accrual Assign On and Allocate On, which say when in the month or the year the grant lands.
• Prorate, for the joiner who arrives in July and should not get a full year.
• On Confirmation, for leave a person does not hold until he is off probation.
• Include Holidays and Include Weekends, which decide whether a holiday inside a leave spell is counted against the balance. This is the single most argued-about setting on the screen.
• Validate Negative and Negative Balance Limit, for whether a person may go into the red and by how much.
• Carry Forward with its percentage, basis, value, maximum limit and expiry: how much of an unused balance survives the year end, and for how long.
• Encashable with Encashment Max Days, Balance To Keep, Encashment Rate Basis and Encashment Divisor, where unused leave can be bought out.
• Days Apply Limit, Days Apply Before and Days Apply Interval, which are the notice and frequency rules.

On the header

• Leave Year Basis and Leave Year Start Month: whether the leave year is the calendar year, the fiscal year, or runs from each person's own joining date. A joining-date leave year means every person's year ends on a different day, which is a real policy some clients have and a real complication for the allocation.
• Leave Without Pay Type and Comp Off Leave Type, which name the types the system should use when it has to create leave itself.
• Convert Absent To Leave, with the absent order lines, which say what an unexplained absence should be charged to and in what sequence. A company that wants an absence taken off the casual balance first and the annual balance second sets that order here.
• Max Consecutive Days, Minimum Notice (Days), Leave Backdate Limit (Days) and Attendance Correction Backdate Limit (Days), which stop a request for last March arriving in November.
• Sandwich Rule, which is the rule about a working day caught between two days of leave.

Most clients need two or three leave groups, not twenty. Management and staff, or permanent and contract. The group a person follows is named on his Employee Policy Profile.

Leave Allocation Run

Leave Allocation Run is what turns the policy into balances. It is the one screen in this stage where saving is running: the document is both the instruction and the record of what it did, and its Employees Processed, Allocated, Carried Forward and Lapsed figures are the result rather than something you type.

The header is a Run Date, a Leave Year, a Month and a Run Type. The three run types are what give you control.

Run Type	What it does
Carry Forward and Allocate	Both halves. The normal year-end or month-start run
Carry Forward and Reset Only	Closes the old year, carries what the policy allows, lapses the rest, and grants nothing
Allocate Entitlement Only	Grants the new entitlement and touches no old balance

Three things about the run that save support calls:

• Accrual only happens on the first day or the last day of a month. A run dated the fifteenth will carry forward but will not accrue, and that is by design rather than a fault.
• People who had not joined, or had not been confirmed, by the run date are skipped. This is correct, and it is also why a new joiner has no balance until a later run reaches him. For a single joiner it is faster to put his entitlement on by hand than to run the allocation again.
• The same work also happens nightly on its own. A client does not have to remember to run it, but a consultant does need to know that balances can appear without anybody having opened the screen.

If nothing at all is eligible, the run refuses rather than producing an empty document.

Employee Leave Entitlement

Employee Leave Entitlement is the one person's view: what he was given, and what he holds now.

Its Entitlement Type says where a figure came from. An Opening balance is one brought in at implementation. An Adjustment is one made by hand. A Transaction is one generated by a leave being taken or allocated. That is what lets you answer "why does he have eleven days" six months later, and it is the reason you should put the client's opening balances in as openings rather than as adjustments.

This screen is also where you fix a balance. Resist doing it often. A balance that has to be corrected by hand every month means the leave group is wrong.

The request screens

Setup finished, this is what the company uses every day.

Employee Request Leave is the employee's own screen: the type, the dates, the duration and a note, all of which it insists on. It is a request and nothing more. The leave is only created when the request is approved. An unapproved request has moved no balance, and an employee who raises a request, looks at his balance and sees it unchanged is seeing the system work correctly.

Employee Leaves is the record that approval creates, and the screen HR uses to see a person's leave or to key one directly where the request route is not being used. The balance, the entitlement and the calendar view of the person's leave are all here.

Leave Cancellation gives back a leave that was approved and then not taken, from a date, for a number of days. It is a separate screen rather than a deletion because a cancelled leave is part of the history.

Leave Encashment buys out a balance, at the rate and within the limits the leave group's encashment settings allow.

Comp Off Request claims time off in lieu of a day worked, granted as the comp off leave type the leave group names.

If something looks wrong

• "Nobody has any leave balance" - the Leave Allocation Run has not been done for this leave year, or the people have no policy profile and so no leave group.
• "The run says it processed nobody" - the run date is before everybody's joining or confirmation date, or no employee has an assignment covering it.
• "I ran it, things were carried forward but nothing was allocated" - the run is dated mid month. Accrual only happens on the first or the last day.
• "He raised a leave and his balance has not changed" - correct. The balance moves when the request is approved.
• "A public holiday inside his leave was counted against his balance" - Include Holidays is set on that leave type's line in the leave group.
• "The new joiner has no leave" - he joined after the last run. Put his entitlement on by hand.