Accruals are setup in two places:
- Account-wide settings are located in the Company Settings -> Hourly tab.
- Individual accrual settings are setup on the Options tab of their account settings.
Account Wide Settings
There are 6 available time off categories of which 3 can accrue time.
- Sick (accruable)
- Vacation (accruable)
- Paid Time Off (accruable)
- Holiday (non-accruable)
- Other1 (non-accruable)
- Other2 (non-accruable)
All time off categories can be renamed or disabled. For example, if a company accrues Flex Time but not sick or vacation, an account administrator could disable the Sick and Vacation categories and change the PTO category label to Flex.
Once account-wide settings have been saved, you can set up specific accrual policies for individual users.
Individual User Accrual Settings
Accrual settings for each user are located on the Options tab of the user’s individual settings. Once configured, the Timesheets.com will track time off accruals and usage. The available settings are:
- Accrual Rate: How often new time is added to accrued hours.
- Beginning Accrual Date: The starting date used to calculate when new time is added to a user’s accruals (used for weekly, bi-weekly, and yearly).
- Hours to Accrue: This is the number of hours to accrue yearly or for each hour worked, depending on the specified accrual rate.
- Currently Accrued Hours: This is the current value of accrued time an employee has to use. Changing this value directly changes the amount of accrued time a user has in their bank.
- Hours to Accrue Per Year: This value is used with the ‘By Hours Worked’ accrual method and specifies the maximum amount of time a person may accrue in a given 12 month period.
- Cap for Maximum Accrued Hours: This option specifies the maximum amount of accrued time a user can accumulate even if the user does not take any time off. Setting the value to zero means there is no limit.
Accrual Rates
There are several available time off accrual rates to choose from including:
- None (time is not set to accrue)
- Daily (time accrues a little bit each day of the year)
- First of the Month (time accrues 12 times per year on the first of each month)
- Twice a Month (time accrues 24 times per year on the 1st and the 15th of each month)
- Every Week (time accrues 52 times per year, or once each week on your specified day)
- Every 2 Weeks (time accrues 26 times per year or every other week on your specified day)
- Once Yearly (time accrues once per year on your specified date)
- By Hours Worked (time accrues for each hour worked – see below for additional information)
By Hours Worked Accrual Rate Notes
- While most accrual rates work on a preset schedule, the By Hours Worked accrual rate will accrue time only when a payroll period is closed and will not accrue if payroll is not closed.
- Also, payroll periods must be closed sequentially for accurate By Hours Worked accrual calculations.
- The By Hours Worked accrual method only works for employees classified as ‘Hourly’ in Timesheets.com. If you wish to use the By Hours Worked rate, you cannot classify employees as ‘Salaried’. If you classify a salaried employee as hourly for the purpose of By Hours Worked accrual calculations, you may wish to then set overtime calculations rate to ‘None’ to prevent overtime from being calculated at payroll close.
- If no accrual per year maximum is desired, set the amount to accrue per year to a high value so it will never be reached (e.g. 1000 hours).
- The accrual rate per hours worked is calculated by dividing 1 hour by the total hours needed to accumulate an hour of time off. For example, if you want to accrue hours at a rate of 1 hour of time off for every 30 hours worked, then the rate is 1/30 = 0.03333 hours to accrue per hour worked.
- Changing the accrual rate mid-year (between the specified anniversary dates) is not recommended because the accrual rate is used to calculate the year-to-date balance. The year-to-date balance is used to ensure workers don’t accrue more time off than the annual cap allows. If you do change the By Hours Worked accrual rate mid-year and also have a yearly cap, you may need to manually adjust the cap to compensate for the rate change. Please contact customer support for help with this adjustment.