As each year passes in WhosOff there are a few things to remember to setup that will enable your staff to book leave for the New Year. As the super user you can quickly and easily setup Allowances, Bank Holidays and also process Carryover (if applicable) in 3 simple processes.
SETTING UP LEAVE ALLOWANCES / ENTITLEMENTS FOR THE NEXT HOLIDAY YEAR.
Using the Bulk Leave Balance Administration tool you can setup your staff leave entitlement for Next Year but also for This Year (if you are just starting out). To do this;
- Login to your WhosOff account
- Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
- Then click on Admin Dashboard
- Under the Bulk section, select Balance Administration
- Then by Department (or All Departments), you can then populate the Opening and Remaining Balance fields for Next Year, but also This Year (if needed).
- For Next Year allowances, you can use the Set Allowances tool located on the right hand side of he page, this will offer you 2 options to apply next year's allowances quickly and easily.
- Prep. with prev. year to copy This Year's Opening allowance over to Next Year's Opening and Remaining allowances.
- Prep. with value to enter a set value to Next Years allowance.
- Always click Save Changes before moving on to the next Department.
This will allow your staff members to book their required time off for Next Year.
Do not include any Carryover in your staff entitlements for This Year, there is a separate process below that will help process any carryover days.
IMPORTING YOUR BANK / PUBLIC HOLIDAYS
In WhosOff there is a quick and easy way to import your country specific Bank or Public Holidays into the system as Free Days, this means that when your staff book time off on or across any one of these days, no allowance will be deducted. To do this;
- Click Administration on the Left Hand menu
- Click on Free / Restricted Days
- Then click on Import Public Holidays
- The tool on the resulting page will allow you to select which Country you would like to import the public holidays for, you can then choose which Selected Departments (or All Departments) you would like to apply the public holidays to (this may be determined by how you have set up your company departments).
Once you've determined which Public Holidays apply to your company / department(s) by using the check box in line with each date, you can click on Import Selected, the system will then inform you how many of the selected Public Holidays have been successfully imported.
Please note that the list of available Public Holidays will be updated automatically year on year, but Free Days (Public Holidays) are still required to be imported by you.
This process can be repeated as many times as required, for each individual country that you are looking to manage on WhosOff.
Once Free Days have been added onto your WhosOff account, they will appear as an F on the WhosOff calendar - the colour of this indicator can also be adjusted via your account's Company Settings.
PROCESSING THE YEARLY CARRYOVER
Sometimes companies will allow their staff members to carryover any unused time off into the New Year up to a maximum number of days. If this applies to your company, you can only process this in the first month of your new holiday year.
Before running this process, always ensure that all Pending Leave has been actioned for the previous year as well as all leave has been entered into the system to get the correct remaining balances for the previous year, you may wish to run a Report to help with this.
To run this process you would first need to establish the maximum number of days your staff are allowed to Carryover;
- Login to your WhosOff account
- Click on Administration on the Left Hand menu
- Click on Company Settings
- On the resulting page, there are 4 sub sections available. You will need to focus on the Yearly section.
- From here, you can use the following options to establish how much Carryover each of your staff are allowed to take.
- Max carryover (days) - affects users with an allowance in Days
- Max carryover (hours) - affects users with an allowance in Hours
- Once you've made any changes, click on Save Changes.
Useful to know - Don't forget that it's possible for staff to carry over different amounts by running this process multiple times, with different Max Values each time, therefore these Max Values can be adjusted at any time.
Then to run the Carryover process;
- Click on Administration
- Click on Admin Dashboard
- On the resulting page, you will see a selection of different tools.
- Click on Yearly carryover
On the following page, you can change which Department you would like to review the carryover process for, either an individual department or All Departments. After making the relevant selection, you will see a list of all staff members within the selected department(s).
In line with each staff member, the following information will be presented.
- Staff member
- Leave remaining - How much leave entitlement they have left from Last Year
- Possible carryover - How much they can carryover (as determined by your max carryover values)
- Allowance type - Indicates if the user is in Days / Hours
Finally, there will be an Include tick box, this will allow you to choose to run the carryover process for this staff member. If the tick box has been replaced with an ERROR then you can highlight the error to see why the process cannot be run for this staff member.
Possible errors include;
- No allowances for Last Year - This is most common for companies who have only used WhosOff for a limited time
- No allowances for This Year - Don't forget that you need to ensure all leave entitlements for the new year have been set up prior to carryover being run
- User has pending leave - When a user has pending leave in the system for Last Year, carryover is not possible, don't forget to process anything before you go to run this process
- Carryover already processed - If carryover has already been processed for a staff member, this will lock last year's pot, therefore you are unable to run it again
Once you've processed the carryover, staff members will be able to see how much of their leave entitlement is carryover, this will be visible on their Dashboard.