Setting Up Leave Tracking Mid-Year

New Virtual TimeClock administrators often have questions about how to enter their leave benefits into the time clock in the middle of the year. This article will outline three ways to approach mid-year leave tracking.

Note: Before choosing an option below, make sure your leave categories are setup correctly and you are familiar with how to enter leave awards.

Option 1: Adjust Leave Calculation for the Remaining Year
The first option is to adjust the leave award to only account for the rest of the year, and then reset the anniversary date in January. Follow these steps when entering leave awards:

1. Set the Frequency to Yearly Award.
2. In Hours Per Year enter the employee's remaining vacation balance as of today.
3. Set the Anniversary date to today's date.
4. At the start of the next benefit year, the administrator can review the user’s leave calculation and reset the anniversary date to January 1.

This option has the benefit of taking less time to setup, but does not provide the ability for users to review leave taken before Virtual TimeClock was introduced.

Option 2: Enter Previously Accrued and Used Leave Information
Another option is to enter the employee's full leave award for the year in Virtual TimeClock, then enter all previously used leave entries into the TimeClock.

1. Set the Frequency to Yearly Award.
2. In Hours Per Year enter the full number of hours awarded to the employee for the year.
3. Set the Anniversary to January 1.
4. If applicable, enter any carryover leave hours from the prior benefit year.
5. Following the Entering Leave Hours article, use the Add Leave feature to add all previously used leave hours for the current year.

This option takes longer to setup, but has the advantage of showing all accrued, used, and carryover hours for the year on reports.

Option #3: Use the Current Leave Tracking System Until the Next Benefit Year 
For this option, the administrator would continue using the current leave tracking method and migrate employees on their next anniversary date.

This option has the advantage of avoiding immediate setup, but requires the administrator to remember that employees must be migrated on their next anniversary date. This can be a very inconvenient option if users have multiple leave categories with differing anniversary dates and is not recommended for that situation.

When the benefit year comes to an end and your users have unused hours, you can carry them over to the new benefit year. Learn how to carryover unused leave >