In reporting, the 'Time off balances' data source (sometimes referred to as a dataset) is one the most useful. It allows you to see as of today, how many days/hours each employee has booked and taken and is broken down by type, along with their remaining balances.

NOTE: 'Time off balances' dataset runs overnight as a batch process (indicated by the * after the dataset name) - this means that each time you run the report you will be seeing the booked, taken, balance and so on from the previous day.

There are a number of 'Time off Balances' fields available to allow you to create a report:

Type ID - this is the unique ID for the time off type in our database

Type - this is the name of the time off type

Starting balance - this is initial starting balance the employee began the period/year with. Usually this will be their full year allowance.

Company holidays - this is the total of any mandatory/company holidays which are to be removed from the employee

Taken - this is the total number of days/hours taken by the employee i.e. these are in the past

Balance - this is calculated based on

'Starting balance'

minus

'Company holidays'

minus 

'Taken'

For example if someone had a starting balance of 28 days, with 8 Company holidays, and had taken 6 days, then this would show as 14.

Booked - this is the total of any days the employee has booked but which they have not yet taken i.e. they are in the future. As these could be changed or deleted, they are shown separately.

True balance - this is calculated based on Balance less booked so, in the above example, if the employee also had 5 days booked then the True balance would be 9.

Authorised? - this indicates if this time off type is authorised (this is not the same as approved)

Paid?- this indicates if this time off type is paid

Year to date figures

The figures above for Starting balance and Balance show you the employee full year allowance - often, however, you may want to know what their entitlement is as of today.

This is most often used to allow you to check who has taken more than they have accrued up to today may present a risk should they leave or those who have taken less than they have accrued up to today which may mean you end up with a lot of people off towards the end of the year negatively impacting productivity.

To aid with this, the dataset has 2 YTD (year to date) figures - these are calculated based on how far today is through the holiday year for the employee. Remember, this may be different for employees depending on how your time off and sites are setup.

Estimated starting balance (YTD) - this will show you, as of today, how many days the employee has actually accrued. Simplistically if the holiday year starts on 1st Jan and you are running the report on 1st July and the employee has a full year entitlement of 28 then this would show as 14.

Estimated balance (YTD) - using the same logic as above in terms of what Balance represents, this shows you what their balance should be if they left today. This is their Starting balance (YTD) less the taken days and a YTD percentage of company holidays. In the above example this would leave their Balance (YTD) as 4.

This is worked out as:

'Starting balance (YTD)' -> 14

minus

'Taken' -> 6

minus

'Company holidays' -> 4 (50% of the total of 8 as we are 50% of the way through the year)

The 'Balance (YTD)' can also be used to compare to the 'Starting balance (YTD)' - for example, if the 'Starting balance (YTD)' shows 14, and the taken days are 6, then the Balance (YTD) is 8. This means that the employee has taken 8 days LESS than you may expect for the time of year - i.e. we are half way through the year but the employee has only taken 29% of their allowance.

Important note about company holidays in YTD

You will not be able to guarantee exactly how many company holidays remain in this report as we are looking at a percentage through the year. For example if the above employee left on 23rd Dec, that is approximately 98% of the way the year but most likely only 75% of the way through company holidays (6 days used out of 8, for example).