The allowance based on a fixed balance is perfect if you want to offer a fixed number of days off to your employees.
For example, if your company has a set number of days off in its time-off policy, regardless of the employee's working hours, you can use this type of allowance.
💡 If you need help finding or creating a new time-off allowance, check out About time-off Allowances for a step-by-step guide.
Configuring a fixed balance allowance
1. Basic information:
- Type of allowance: Select fixed balance
- Absence types: add the absences you want to include into this allowance
❗ You can select default absences (vacation, sick days, or parental leave) in addition to custom absences created beforehand. To learn how to add custom absences, read this article on How to create absence types.
Please note that you can only assign each type of absence to one allowance in a given policy.
2. Cycle settings:
A cycle is a period that defines when the allowance starts and expires. Determine here how the allowance will be measured and earned.
- The cycle begins on: choose the month
- Cycle duration: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12 months
❗ Cycles can no longer be edited once the allowance has been created.
3. Allowance settings:
Allowance is set in: you can choose between days or hours
How should we display those days/hours?
- For days: choose between days and half days, days with decimals, or round-ups (full days)
- For hours: choose between hours with decimals, hours with 15-minute blocks, or hours with 30-minute blocks
Base allowance days/hours:
- Define the number of available absence days/hours for your employees during each cycle.
- Choose if the days/hours are:
- Working days/hours
- Calendar days/hours
💡 Working days may change based on vacation policies in the city where the company is located. Although every employee will have the same vacation policies, some may switch up their working days depending on local holidays.
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If a bank holiday falls on the absence:
- Don’t count it as an absence da
- Count it as an absence day
❗ Bank holidays are always displayed in the calendar, even if they are counted as regular working days.
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If the vacation ends before a bank holiday or weekend (only for calendar days/hours):
- Count that bank holiday or weekend
- Do not count that bank holiday or weekend
- Are base allowance days prorated?
If yes, the employee will receive the proportional number of days. If not, the employee will receive the full base allowance days.
👀 Example:
Imagine your employees have 24 days prorated in a year, if one of them joined the company on July 1st, by default the platform will mark 12 days of allowance, since the number of days is divided by the number of months worked.
When you disable the prorated calculation, the 24 days will be given to your employee.
You have three options:
- All at once: your employee will be given the 24 days.
- Monthly: in this case, your employee would see 4 days, which are the 24 days divided into the 6 months.
- Daily: same logic as above but allowance is released considering days and not months.
In this way, you can offer your employees full base allowance time independently of how much time they have worked.
- Maximum allowance days:
It is the maximum balance of time-off an employee can accrue
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How are allowance days/hours accrued?
- All at once - First day of the cycle
- Daily: time-off is accrued daily at 00:01, based on the previous day's accumulation.
- Monthly - First day: time-off is accrued on the 1st day of each month at 00:01.
- Monthly - Last day: time-off is accrued on the last day of each month at 00:01.
- Twice a month - 1st and 15th: time-off is accrued on the 1st and 15th of every month at 00:01.
- Twice a month - 15th and last day: time-off is accrued on the 15th and last day of every month at 00:01.
- When can they be used?
Determine when employees can use this time-off: in the same cycle in which they were acquired or in the cycle following that in which they were acquired.
❓ What can be done if an employee reaches maximum allowance hours, but needs more time-off?
Employees can request more time-off through the time-off section of their employee portal. Additional time-off will be granted as unpaid time-off.
- Can the counter be negative?
If yes, it is possible to request more days than the maximum available. If not, it is not possible to request more days than the maximum available.
💡 By disabling the negative counter, you prevent employees from requesting days off when their counterbalance is at zero. This ensures that they cannot request more time-off than what is available to them.
☝🏻 "No" will be the option by default for new allowances and every existing allowance will have this option by default.
4. Carryover settings:
This option allows employees to carry unused allowance days or hours from one cycle to the next.
- How many days/hours carryover? This is the limit of days/hours that can be carried over to the next cycle
- When do carryover days/hours expire? Choose the expiration date of the carryover days/hours, or check the No Expiration option
5. Tenure period:
You can determine if and after what amount of time your employees will be entitled to an increase in their allowance and how many days they will be granted.
🤓 Learn more about tenure periods
👉🏻 Keep in mind that you can create as many time-off allowances as you need within the same time-off policy. For example, you can create an allowance for the standard company holidays that every employee is entitled to, and add another allowance for days accrued by working overtime. Discover more about time-off allowances