With summer just around the bend, we’ve decided to share the most common vacation policy we see here at Fingercheck. Our support technicians have helped hundreds of clients set up their vacation policies, and in our experience, the most common arrangement starts with 40 hours per year of PTO (one workweek or five days). This can often increase with the duration of the employee’s employment with the company.
If you’re interested in learning how to create this basic PTO policy, keep reading.
Step 1
- Head to the Setup tab and select the “Policies Menu,” then “Accrual Policies.” Click “Add” to make the policy.
Step 2
Within this window, you’ll set up your policy. Here’s how to do it.
- Code, Description: These are labels to identify your policy.
- Accrual Calculation Rule: Select “Frequency Based” — this means your employees will get the accrual hours at a set interval, as opposed to rate hours which could fluctuate depending on the hours worked.
- Accrual Frequency: If you want to give your employees their PTO hours upfront, select “Calendar Year.” If you’d like your employees to gain the PTO hours as the year progresses, select “Monthly.”
- Use Rehire Date: This checkbox works with Anniversary Date accrual policies.
- Display on Stub: This checkbox can be checked if you’d like PTO hours to be displayed on their paystub.
If you’re setting up monthly PTO accruals:
- Fixed Accrual Day Month: Enter a number to indicate the date each month the hours should accrue. (Ex: Day 1 = The first of every month)
- New Hire Pending Days: If you’d like the employee to work a certain number of days before getting access to the PTO hours they’ve accrued (like 90 for a three-month period), enter the number. The hours will still have accrued, but they won’t be available until that period is over.
Back to the rest of the policy:
- Rollover Rule: Select “CalendarYearEnd” so that the policy resets your employees’ PTO at the end of the year or select Anniversary if you would like it to reset on the anniversary of their hire date.
- Rollover Carry Forward: Check this box if you would like the PTO to roll over into the next year.
- Rollover Earning: If you want to pay out unused PTO hours at the end of the year, select the earning to pay out the hours when they reach the end of the year.
- New Hire Filter: If you’d like this accrual policy to automatically be assigned to new hires, you have to create a user filter for status active.
After this, click “Add” by PTO Rates to create your Accrual rate.
Step 3
- LOS Type: Select the employee length of service type – this allows you to define the policy by tying the rate to a month, a year, etc. for how long the employee has worked for you.
- Los Number: If you want this rate to go on until infinity, you would put a large number here like 9,999. However, if you’d like your employees to get 40 hours of PTO for 12 months, and then 80 hours of PTO after the 12 months, etc. you would just put 12 here, and then repeat the process for the other intervals. When they exceed this Los, they move onto the next rate.
- Accrual Rate: This is the amount you want your employees to accrue based on the accrual frequency (step 2).
- Max Per Accrual & Max Pending: Skip.
- Max Allowed: If you want to cap the hours, enter the number here. Ex: If you don’t want them to gain more than 40 hours in a year.
- Max Available: Skip.
- Max CarryOver: If you check the Rollover Carry Forward box, here’s where you enter the number of hours the employee rolls over into the new year. However, keep in mind that if you’ve used the “Max Allowed” field, it will count the hours you’ve rolled over as part of their allotment the following year, and block them from accruing beyond that amount.
- Click “Apply” to finish.
If you want, you can create more rates, as we’ve shown below. Once you’re done click Save.
Step 4
Go to the Employee Tab, select an employee, and go to “Accrual Policies.” Click Add.
Here, simply select the Accrual Policy you just made. By Allowed as of, enter the start date for the policy. Match Last Accrual, Last Rollover, and Last Pending Moved. By Allowed Hours, enter the number of hours you want them to get straight off the bat. Click “Apply” and you’re done!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. Is this your policy? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Remember, if you need extra assistance, you can call us at 800-610-9501. We also have a help desk that provides hundreds of tutorials like this one at help.fingercheck.com.