How do I create balance and accrual rules?

Question

How do I create balance and accrual rules?

Answer

Background

Balance and accrual rules control how balance limits and accruals are handled. Balances are associated with Pay Codes, and can be enabled from the Pay Code properties page.

1. Navigate to System >> Policies >> Policy
   
   
2. Click Edit
   
   
3. Select Balance and Accrual Rules
   
   The following rules can be configured for each enabled balance: 

   Rule	Description
   Minimum Balance	The minimum value for this balance, in hours. Employees will be alerted when their timesheet puts a balance below this value, and they will not be able to submit the timesheet.
   Maximum Balance	The maximum value for this balance, in hours. The balance will be capped at this value.
   Enable Accrual	Enables automatic accrual on this balance. Automatic accrual means the system will automatically accrue hours and perform rollovers to the employee's balance on a regular interval. Note: You can not set Maximum Balance if this is checked because it will be entered in the table.You can edit Comp Time, Sick, and Vacation rules.
   Accrual Period	If accrual is enabled you should choose the appropriate accrual period. The accrual will happen before midnight on the last day of the period, making it available for the first day of next period. You can choose from any period you have defined in the System >> General >> Time Periods page.

4. Enable Automatic Accrual by checking the checkbox.
   
   
   • Click Add to add rows or click the blue minus sign to remove rows.
   
   

   Property	Description
   Years Employed	The number of years of employment that this rate starts to take effect. If you only have one row in your accrual table this property will be hidden and default to zero, meaning the rate will apply to all employees using this policy, regardless of their years of employment. If the employee's first day is not set then it is assumed to be zero years.
   Accrual Rate	The accrual rate for this balance, in hours. Accruals will be automatically granted before midnight on the last day of the specified accrual period.
   Max. Work	This column only appears if the accrual period is set to "Hourly - For Every Hour Worked". Leave this value blank if there is no maximum.
   Maximum	The cap or maximum hours the balance can reach. Leave this value blank if there is no maximum.
   Rollover	The maximum hours that can be carried forward each rollover period for this balance. Leave this value blank if there is no maximum.

5. Click the blue dropdown arrow next to Options to change the Rollover Period, Rollover/ accrual sequencing, or Move excess rollover hours.
   
   

   Rule	Description
   Rollover Period	If a rollover value is specified in the accrual table (described above), you should choose the appropriate rollover period (it will default to Yearly starting on January 1).
   Rollover/accrual sequencing	This controls whether the rollover runs immediately before or immediately after an accrual that would fall on the same date.
   Move Excess Rollover Hours To	If you specify a non-blank rollover value, you can have excess hours (hours over the rollover value) be added to a separate balance. For instance, you might set the annual rollover for the 'Sick Leave' balance at 0.00, and have any left-over hours be added to an 'Extended Sick Leave' balance.
   Forecast only	If this option is checked then no accrual will actually be added to the employee's balance. The accrual settings will only be used in forecasting an employee's available hours when requesting leave (for instance from the Home > New Leave Request page). You would only want to check this option if you are importing or synchronizing your balances from an external payroll or HR system (that is, an external system is calculating your accruals).

Troubleshooting Automatic Accruals

If you are not seeing the expected accruals or rollovers for your employees please review the following troubleshooting steps before contacting support:

1. Make sure that the employee has the correct policy in their employee profile, and that the policy has accruals enabled. 
   
   
2. If no accrual is happening, make sure the "Forecast only" option is not checked. Also make sure the correct accrual rate is specified in the accrual rate table. 
   
   
3. If the accrual is happening but an incorrect rate is being used, make sure the correct "First Day" property is set in the employee's profile. 
   
   
4. For non-yearly accrual periods, employees who have been employed for less than one accrual period (for example, an employee started a week ago but the accruals happen every month) will not trigger an accrual. That is, the system will not give them a partial or pro-rated accrual for working a partial accrual period. You can always specify an initial balance for the employee if need be, from the Current Balances section of their employee profile page. For yearly accrual periods the accrual will happen even if the employee has been employed less than one year. For these employees you can pro-rate or provide a partial accruals by specifying accrual rates for partial years.
   
   
5. Understand that the accrual or rollover is not generated until the last day of the period, just before midnight. Any changes you make to an employee's accrual rules will not take effect until the end of the subsequent accrual or rollover period. If you add a new employee whose first day is before the current date, you may need to specify an initial balance as the system will not go back in time and generate past accruals and rollovers.
   
   
6. This is for self-hosted customers only: As the system generates accruals and rollovers just before midnight at the end of the period, you need to make sure the Pacific Timesheet service is running. If you shut down the computer or service at night then the accruals or rollovers might not happen. You can shut down or restart the computer for maintenance needs, but in general you want to leave it running overnight in order for the accruals, rollovers and other background processes to run.
   
   
7. There might be cases where you need to rerun accruals and rollovers for a past period of time for a large number of employees. Pacific Timesheet has a utility to rerun your current accrual settings for a past time period. Please contact [e-mail] for a solution document outlining how to use this utility to rerun past accruals and rollovers.