You can find time off settings by navigating to:

Administration -> Company -> Settings -> Time off settings (Global)

Time off settings (global) is where you enter your time off settings for the organisation - if you have sites or countries with different rules then you should enter those which cover the majority of employees here and use Site level time off settings for those locations where the settings are different.

Holiday Year

• Holiday year: If your holiday year starts on a set day then you should leave this at "Set date" and enter the date in "Start of holiday year". If each employees holiday year starts on the anniversary of their start date then choose "Employee start date".
• Start of Holiday Year: If the Holiday Year field is set to 'Set Date', enter the date in this field. This will indicate the first day in your current holiday year.
• Carryover days and expiry date: If you want to allow employees to carry over days from one holiday year to the next then you can enter the maximum number of days and the date on which they must be used by. If you leave these blank then carryover will not be available - if you'd like to have no maximum days and/or no expiry date then simply enter values and dates which will never be reached such as 400 days and date year of 2030 for example.
• Include Carryover in Summary Type: If there has been carryover allocated to an employee and this option is set to yes and a Summary Time Off Type has been created, the carry-over can be included in this type.

Self Service

• Allow employees to enter time off days/hours: This will enable employees to add time off for themselves if this is set to yes. If this is set to no, only managers and HR/Admin level users will be able to add time off for employees.
• Allow employees to specify AM/PM for half-day bookings: This will allow employees to specify if they require time off in the AM or PM if this option is set to yes. Otherwise, they can only book full days.
• Allow employees to request more days than allowance: If an employee only has five days left, for example, this option will allow them to book more than 5 days at one time if set to yes.
• Apply time off booking rules: If this is set to yes, rules can be applied as to how many people can be off at the same time, enabling this option will reveal further options below it.
  • Time off rules - selection: This setting determines how you define what cohort of employees the person making the time off booking should use as their 'team'.
  • Time off rules - number: What is the maximum number of people allowed off at one time?
  • Time off rules - percentage: What is the maximum percentage of people allowed off at one time?
  • Time off rules - include pending time off?: Do you want to include pending time off when calculating time off rules?
  • time off rules - action: What action should be taken when a request violates a rule?
• Allow employees to trade time off: If 'YES OPEN' is selected, employees will be able to buy or sell time off allowances and also book the time associated with it. If 'YES CLOSED' is selected, employees will not be able to buy or sell time off allowances but will be able to book the time associated with it.
• Show employee allowance breakdown on home page: If this option is set to yes, the breakdown of the employees' allowances can be viewed on their homepage.
• Allow employees to edit time off: By default employees can edit a time off request if it is in the future, if you do not want them to do this set this to NO. Regardless of this setting employees cannot edit time off in the past.
• Allow employees to delete time off: By default employees can delete a time off request if it is in the future, if you do not want them to do this set this to NO. Regardless of this setting employees cannot delete time off in the past.

Accrual

• Time off allowances accrual: If this setting is set to 'YES', employee allowances will be accrued based on the time which has passed since their year start date, rather than having the whole annual allowance available from the year start date. This is not the same as 'Balance Pro-Rated' which occurs by default when an employee starts mid-way through the holiday year.
• Maximum Accrual value: Here, the limit of what can be accrued throughout the business can be established. By default, length of service time off types are not accrued.
• Accrue length of service types: By default, length of service types are not accrued. Once the employee has earned their length of service leave they can see and request the whole amount. This option allows you to accrue length of service leave in the same way as other leave types with allowances as per the above setting.
• Time off in lieu: If you are using timesheets and you wish employee overtime to be accrued as time off in lieu then set this to Yes.
• Allow employees to request time off in lieu allowance: If this setting is set to 'YES', employees will be able to request hours to be banked against time off in lieu which they can then book off as per normal time off.
• Timesheets overtime auto accrue time off in lieu: If this setting is set to 'YES', any overtime added using timesheets (i.e more hours than contracted) will create a corresponding TOIL value.

Company Holiday

• Company holidays mandatory: If you want the dates you enter as Company Holidays to be mandatory to employees and therefore not be counted in the calculation of holiday duration then set this to Yes. If you do then ensure you enter the employee allowances excluding those mandatory days.
• Company holidays mandatory - starters mid-year: If you enable mandatory company holidays, you can decide how you determine entitlement to mandatory holidays. Available options are:
  • Entitled only to days after they start.
  • Entitled to percentage of all days.
  • Percentage and days after.
• Company holidays mandatory - working pattern precedence: When an employee has a custom working pattern (or rota), the system will ignore mandatory days when calculating time off duration etc. as the working pattern is saying the employee is meant to work on this day - in some cases, companies may want the mandatory day to take precedence which can be done by setting this value to NO which would mean then that the working day is ignored and the mandatory day will apply.

Display Settings

• Round-up time off balances: By default, employee allowances are not rounded in any way. You can define how employee allowances are rounded (if required) by editing this setting. Available options are:
  • No.
  • Up to nearest 0.5.
  • Down to nearest 0.5.
  • Up to nearest whole number.
  • Down to nearest whole number.
• Availability: Set thresholds to be used within the availability module to display the red/green employee count flags for attendance. 'Availability - RED threshold' allows you to set the lower value for the employee count flag and Availability - GREEN threshold allows you to set the higher value.
• Time off no allowances: If this is selected to YES, this changes how the allowance doughnut is displayed. Rather than the doughnut showing the days taken, booked etc as a percentage of the total allowance, the doughnut will always show as 100% with segments made up of the types you specify in the time off types set up. PLEASE NOTE: You will still need to ensure you do not have any time off types with allowances allocated to them.

General Settings

• Pro-rate allowances upon mid-year changes: If you select YES, time off allowances will be pro-rated based on the allowance change values, for example, if the employee has 25 days for 6 months then changes to 19 days for 6 months this would display as 22 days. 
• Service leave - pro-rate option: When using length of service leave for an employee who works part-time, you can choose to pro-rate their service leave by either their FTE or their working days.
• Auto-populate allowances based on-site and job title: If this option is set to YES time-off allowances marked as auto-populate will be populated using the corresponding value for the employee site and job title. The ability to modify this time-off allowance will be lost once this setting is enabled. This uses the same setting as 'service leave pro-rate for part-time staff'.
• Auto-populate allowance based on site and job title: - prorate option: When using auto populate allowances based on site and job title, you can choose to prorate their allowance by either their FTE or their working days.
• Time off blackouts: If enabled you will be able to enter periods by department and/or site where no one is allowed to book timeoff - if you choose you can allow it so managers and/or HR can override this and enter timeoff which occurs during blackouts on behalf of the employee. Additionally, blackout periods only apply to authorised time off types meaning employees can still enter sickness.
• Time off bulk approve: If 'YES' is selected, manager/approvers will be able to bulk approve time off from the listing page. PLEASE NOTE: this will mean it is possible for manager and approvers to approve time off without ever actually viewing them.
• Time off period calculation - user entered value: Each time a time off request is entered, the system will split this request into individual days and assign a value against each date in a separate dataset for reporting purposes. By default, the system will calculate this value based on the employee working pattern etc. but you can instead override this calculation and tell the system to use your entered value divided by the number of day instead.

Absence Settings

• Bradford Factor period (months): Bradford Factor is one way of measuring employee absenteeism. Most companies tend to measure the impact of absenteeism over a rolling 12 month period but if you want an alternate duration (in months) then you can set this here.
• Bradford Factor calculation method: By default, Bradford Factor calculation works on the START date of the time off request - they may mean in some situations such as those where the absence is very long that the absence may not be included in the Bradford Factor score. For example, absence from 1st Jan to 1st April with a 12 month Bradford Factor period would drop off after 2nd Jan the following year despite the majority of those days being in the prior 12 months. Setting this to INDIVIDUAL DATES means we will ignore the start date of the request and include each individual date which would mean the Bradford Factor score would still include the above absence right up to and including 1st April reducing each day as the duration in scope would get smaller as time went on.
• Long term definition: This will be your definition of what makes an absence long term. Anything equal to or greater than this figure will be marked as long term.
• Long term - method: By default, long term looks at the duration of the absence request - for example if the request is 31 days and the above value in long term definition is 28 then it would be classed as long term. However, you may wish to base long term on calendar days rather than working days so the same absence would only be classed as long term if the difference between the start and end date was greater than or equal to the value in long term definition.
• Absence rate period (months): What is the period of absence in months?
• Bradford Factor - out of policy: If this option is set to 'YES', you will have the option of setting a time-off request as 'Out of Policy' meaning it will be included in the Bradford Factor calculation regardless of the authorised setting for that time off type.
• Return to work form: If you wish to use your own return to work form instead of the system default, this can be selected here.
• Self-certification form: If you wish to use your own self-certification form instead of the system default, this can be selected here
• Return to work and self-certification - daily email until completed: By default, an email is sent to the employee's manager the day of the employee return only. hanging this setting to 'YES' will mean the email is sent every day until the relevant process is completed. 
• Return to work trigger duration: The minimum duration a time off instance must be before the employee must complete a return to work.
• Self-certification trigger duration: The minimum duration a time off instance must be before the employee must complete a self-certification.

Company Defaults

• Working days: Set the normal working days for your workforce. This can be overridden at an employee level for those who work weekends, for example, but this is used in time off calculations to exclude weekends, for example, when calculating the duration of a request.
• Standard working day in hours: The standard number of working hours can be entered here. 
• Work week begins on: What days does your working week begin on? 
• Variable hours percentage allowance: If any of your employees work variable hours/zero-hours contracts, this is the percentage allocated to time-off for each hour worked and tracked via timesheets or time tracking.
• Average hours worked calculation period (weeks): This field allows you to specify the duration over which you wish to determine the number of hours to deduct for each day time-off booked. If this is not specified, this will default to 13 weeks.

Once you have set your time off settings, you should then add time off types though this is not necessary for the initial setup of the system.