Tracking Summer Vacations with Virtual TimeClock | Blog

Virtual TimeClock Support Blog

Tracking Summer Vacations with Virtual TimeClock

June 1, 2018

Summer is upon us once again! The kids are out of school and you may be making final preparations for summer vacations. Though vacations are highly anticipated, they often disrupt office operations and require the workload to be shared among employees. Virtual TimeClock leave and messaging features can help you mange the demands that summer vacations put on your business.

Manage Time Off Requests
Employees can request time-off using Virtual TimeClock's messaging features to request time off directly to their manager or business owner. You can quickly review their accrued balance, other employee requests, and send a message back to the worker approving, denying, or qualifying their vacation request.

Requesting Time Off
Users access messaging by selecting Messaging from the Hamburger menu in upper left corner of their User Status window.
Approving Time Off
Managers or administrators can then view and respond to leave requests at their convenience. With Administration turned on, select the Messaging icon in the toolbar at the top of the In & Out Board.

Tip: To retain a record of a message sent message, add yourself as a recipient of any request or approval message.

Accrued & Used Vacation Balances
Virtual TimeClock makes it easy to track available and used leave hours for immediate employee and management access. Employees have access to their own leave balance reports from the Hamburger menu in their User Status Window. Managers and administrators access reports while in administration mode by selecting the report from the Reports program menu.
  • The Accrued and Used Leave report to see available leave hours for a user if leave awards are entered into Virtual TimeClock. If leave awards are not entered into Virtual TimeClock refer to where you keep track of used and available leave hours to decide to approve the time off or not.
  • The Leave Detail report to see if other employees have already received approval and their time off entered into the time clock for the same day(s). Leave hours can be entered at any time before the payroll period the time off takes place in is closed. You can enter the hours beforehand to keep track of when other employees are taking time off, so you don't accidentally approve time off for multiple people on a busy workday.

How to Enter Leave Hours
We have several Knowledge Base articles to help you get started using Virtual TimeClock's leave tracking features. It will show you how to setup and use various leave tracking functions and features in Virtual TimeClock. Our overview of leave tracking is a great place to start if this is new to you. The following outlines the process:

  1. The first step to track leave with Virtual TimeClock is to setup your leave categories. The default leave categories in Virtual TimeClock are Holiday, Personal, Sick Leave, and Vacation. Learn more about leave categories.
  2. Next you can create worker leave awards if you want to track accruals, use, and balances for the benefit year. Learn more about leave awards.
  3. Finally, you'll enter leave hours for employees. This can be done at any time before the payroll period containing the leave is closed. For example, the leave can be added at the first of the month, the beginning of the payroll period, or whenever fits into your admin workflow. Learn more about creating leave entries.

Simplify your life this summer season by using Virtual TimeClock to manage your employee's vacation and leave!