Within Natural HR, time off allowances are normally allocated to each employee individually using the Benefits module.  Some businesses, however, will have a standard allowance for common time off types such as Annual Leave for employees who have the same Site or Job Title.

Natural HR makes it possible to specify a default value for an employee based on a combination of site and job title.  For example, this can be used if an employee with the Job Title "Account Manager" and site "Head Office" has a different allowance to an employee with the Job Title "Account Manager" and site "Paris", or an "Account Manager" gets a different allowance to an "Account Director".

When using this feature, it is also possible to enable pro-ration so that the time off value is pro-rated based on either the employee's FTE value or working days. 

If you wish to set this up so that allowances can be pro-rated, please refer to the following article:

Prorating Time Off Allowances for Part-Time Employees

This article will discuss the setup of this type of time off, by site and job title but will not cover pro-ration.

There are 3 stages to setting up time off of this type:

1. Enabling in Time off settings
2. Setting up a Time off Type to accommodate allowances
3. Entering Allowances by Site and Job Title

Enabling in Time off Settings

In order to set this up you will need to make a change to your organisation's time off settings by going to:

Administration > Company > Settings > Time off settings (global)

Scroll down to the General settings heading and locate the setting Auto populate allowances based on site and job title.  Set this to Yes to enable this feature. 

If you intend to use pro-ration, in the same section you will also note a setting labelled Auto populate allowances based on site and job title - prorate option.

Set this to either Prorated based on FTE or Prorated based on working days to choose whether your part time allowances will be prorated based on FTE or Working days.

For example, an employee with an FTE of 0.5 and a default allowance of 28 would have 14 populated - alternatively, an employee who works Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday against a default working week of Monday to Friday would have 16.8 as their 3 working days are 60% of the whole week so they they 60% of 28 days.

Setting up a Time off type to accommodate allowances

Next, you will need to add a Time off Type against which the allowances will be stored.  To do this go to:

Administration > HR > Time off management > Time off types

Click on the 'Add' button to add a Time off type.

This should be set up in the same way as any Individual Allowance time off type to be allocated against employees.  Important fields to consider on this page are:

• Time off type - A name for the time off type which will be seen by employees and managers when booking, approving or reporting on time off of this type.
  
  
• Deduct from employee allowance? - This should be set to Yes from individual allowance.
  
  
• Paid and Authorised - Set both to Yes.
  
  
• Auto Populate Type - Should be set to Yes in order for the balance to be automatically populated and pro-rated.

For further information on setting up a Time off type please refer to the following article: 
Getting Started - Time off types.

Entering Allowances by Site and Job Title

PLEASE NOTE: If you have employees whose entitlement is in days and some who are in hours then you will need to set this up for both days AND hours so each site and job title combination will then have a value for hours and a value for days.

The final stage of the process is to enter the starting balances which will be pro-rated to create the employee's allowance.  These balances can be entered at the following location:

Administration > HR > Time off management > Allowances by site and job title

 
This will display a grid view of starting balances, along with controls which allow you to populate the grid.  Your sites are displayed as headings at the top of each column, and your job titles are displayed along the left-hand side of each row:

To populate the entire grid with the same value, enter the number of days (or hours) in the Default field and click on the 'Populate all' button.

To populate an entire column (site) with the same value, enter the value in the first text box and click on the small icon.

In the below example we are changing the allowances for all employees in the Cambridge site.  First, enter the new allowance (40) in the first row:

Next, we click on the icon:

The result is:

Allowances for all employees with a given Job title can also be populated in the same way by entering the value in the first field in the row and clicking on the icon.

Once you have populated the table with the desired allowances click on the 'Update' button at the bottom of the page.

Moving forward, this value will be applied in the below two scenarios:

1. Any newly entered employees who match the Job Title/Site combination.
2. Any employees who subsequently change Job Title, Site or FTE / Working days or hours through the Employee Change process or via Employee Benefits. 

Usage

The final option on this page is a button to 'Publish' the allowances to employees - this will then insert or update the relevant allowance for the specified time off type for all employees.

It is recommended to use this publish option only during the initial setup of your environment and not in a live environment with existing balances present.  This is because this option will over-write existing time off allowances.

If you have added a new allowance by site and job title and the employee has not yet been added, when you add them the system will pick up their entitlement from the combination of their job title and site.

If you have already added the employee, if you go to their benefits screen and simply submit (you do not need to change anything) this will then run the process for that one employee and populate their entitlement.

If you are unsure about any of this, please contact Natural HR support before making any changes.