Employee Time Off

Owned by Paul Hitchcock
Last updated: Oct 24, 2024 by Chris Phillips
7 min read

Tracking when employees take time off can be tracked under Employees-->Time off. The Time off tab is split into two areas. One for Time Off and one for Special Days.

Time Off and Special Days work independently of each other but in cases where data should be in both areas, add to the Special Days first and then copy records from there to Time Off.

Time Off

The Time Off area is transaction based and lets you add banked hours that employees can be paid out. To add Transactions directly to this area, first select an employee, then right-click on the Transactions list to Add/Edit transactions.

When entering the quantity of hours, use a positive value to add available hours to their banked hours, and use a negative value to subtract hours as they are paid out.

The Banked Hours list will show a running total of transactions for each Type for the selected employee.

  • Date - The date of the transaction (Note: Unless using the ‘Add Date Range’ option, the transaction will default to today’s date.

  • Type - Select the type of transaction. This is a customizable list, but starts with Holiday, Vacation, Personal Time and Other.

  • Hours - Quantity of hours. A positive number adds available hours to the employees banked hours. A negative value subtracts from the banked hours.

  • Note - A user note to indicate why the transaction exists. Examples: “Christmas”, “Doctor’s Appointment”.

Add/Modify a Type: When the window opens, to select the Type, right-click the list of Types to modify the list.

Special Days

The Special Days area is used to add atypical days to the calendar and indicate when one or more employees are working hours different from the typical schedule. Right-click on the Special Days list to add/edit records and to copy records from Special Days to Time Off

  • Global - Indicates that the record is global and shows up for all employees. If this is unchecked, the record is a Personal record and only affects the selected employee. Holidays recognized by your organization are considered ‘Global’.

  • Type - Workday or Day off. To indicate that a date that is not a Workday is now a Workday, add a Global record and set the Type to Workday. To indicate that a date that is a Workday is now a Day off (i.e. Holidays), add a Global record and set the Type to Day Off.

  • Date - The date the calendar override starts

  • End - Optional. The date the calendar override ends

  • Hours - This is an override of the typical hours. For records with Type set to Day Off, a blank value is the same as zero. If an employee is working a partial day, enter the amount of hours they are working that day. For example if they typically work a 8 hour day and they are leaving 2 hours early, enter 6.

  • Note - A note to indicate why the records exists. Examples: “Christmas”, “Doctor’s Appointment”

Time Off Tab in Timeclock Module

In addition to managing time off by employee in the Employee module, you can also add time-off requests in the Timeclock module.

The Time Off tab in the Timeclock module is also where supervisors go to approve/reject employee’s time-off requests. In the same fashion as from the Employee module, you can add/modify Global Special Days, as well.

View the entire organization’s employee time-off requests along with global special days (holidays or any other scheduled company closure) in a single linear calendar view.

  1. Navigate to the Timeclock module.

  2. Select the ‘Time Off’ tab.

Add a Time-Off Request

  1. To add a new time-off request, you can either (a) click the ‘Request Time Off’ links, or (b) Right-mouse-click anywhere in the time-off request panel.

     

  2. Click the desired Start Date on the calendar to populate the Start Date.

  3. Click the desired End Date on the calendar to populate the End Date.

  4. Select the type of absence from the ‘Reason’ dropdown by clicking on the the field.

  5. Add a note describing the purpose of the time-off request. (Optional)

  6. Clicking Send Request will add the request to the calendar where it will display in yellow until approved by the Supervisor, at which time it will display on the calendar as a green bar.

     

 

Approve/Reject Request (Supervisor)

The employee’s supervisor will appear in the ‘Supervisor’ column. As a supervisor, you will have the ability to approve or reject one of your report’s requests.

To approve a time-off request:

  1. Select an unapproved employee time-off request (indicated by the blue check in the ‘Request’ column and the request displays in yellow)

  2. Right-mouse-click to open the pop-up context menu.

  3. Select ‘Approve Request’ from the menu.

     

  4. Populate the ‘Response’ and ‘Note’ fields if desired, and click ‘Approve’.

Reject Request

  1. Follow steps 1 and 2 above.

  2. Select ‘Reject Request’ from the pop-up context menu.

     

     

  3. Provide a reason for rejecting the time-off request.

     

     

Managing Time Off on the Calendar

In addition to managing time off by employee in the Employee module, you can also add time-off requests in the Timeclock module.

The Time Off tab in the Timeclock module is also where supervisors go to approve/reject employee’s time-off requests. In the same fashion as from the Employee module, you can add/modify Global Special Days, as well.

View the entire organization’s employee time-off requests along with global special days (holidays or any other scheduled company closure) in a single linear calendar view.

  1. Navigate to the Calendar module.

  2. Select the ‘Time off Requests’ from the list of Events to display on the calendar

  3. Right-click a time-off request to open a pop-up context menu with options to:

    1. Goto (if the Crows Nest user has permissions to access the Employees form, this option will take you to the employee the time-off request is for.)

    2. Export - Allows you to export the event from the calendar as an iCalendar file (*.ics), for import into other calendaring applications that support ICalendar files (e.g., Google Calendar). This option also allows the user to send the .ics file via email, copy it, or copy a path to its saved location.

    3. Request Time Off - Allows the logged-in user to request time off for themselves.

    4. Add Time Off (only visible to Supervisors) - Allows the Supervisor to create a Time-off request for another employee.

    5. Approve Request - If the user logged-in is a supervisor, clicking the Approve Request option will allow them to approve the employee’s time-off request.

    6. Reject Request - Like the Approve Request options, the user must be a supervisor to reject an employee’s time-off request.

 

Holidays and other Calendar Special Days

Holidays and other scheduled company closures can be added ad hoc throughout the calendar year. However, you may find it more efficient to take about 10-15 minutes each December to enter at least the known holidays that your organization will observe in upcoming new year.

Creating the Calendar Special Days by themselves, does not automatically create employee labor records for the day off. You will need to copy the records to the Payroll Group(s) that you wish to record labor records for (ideally during the pay period that the special day is observed).

Copying the Calendar Special Days to the Payroll Group(s) will generate transactions that will appear in the ‘Transaction’ records panel of the Time Off tab.

Here is a typical scenario:
Your company observes multiple holidays each year, and they want the employees to be able to take that time off as paid time-off without having to use banked hours from their ‘Vacation’, ‘Sick’, or ‘PTO’ hour banks.

However, you don’t want employees to have to be responsible for creating their own punches for the holiday. You want the system to automatically account for them and reflect the paid ‘Holiday’ hours on your labor reports for that particular payroll period.

So, you create a ‘Global’ day off such as ‘New Year’s Day', you enter the date that the holiday is observed (i.e., Monday, January 1, 2024), and you enter 8.00 hours to be paid out as holiday pay.

Now, sometime during the payroll period the holiday falls in, you will run ‘Copy to Allowed Time Off for Payroll Group(s)’ to apply the 8.00 hours to selected payroll group(s) that align with your organization’s policies (i.e., Hourly-F/T) for paid holidays.

 

 

How to copy Calendar Special Days to create time-off transactions:

This example demonstrates the process described in the typical scenario above using ‘Holiday’ as the example. However, the process is the same whether the Calendar Special Day is a holiday, a closure due to a snow storm, or closure due to maintenance.

  1. Right-click on the selected holiday to pop-up a context menu.

  2. Select ‘Copy to Allowed Time Off for Payroll Group(s)’ from the pop-up menu.

     

     

  3. Confirm the Qty of Hours per day = 8, and click ‘OK’.

     

     

  4. Select ‘Holiday’ from the time off type.

     

     

  5. Select one or more Payroll Groups to apply the holiday to, and click ‘Close’.

     

  6. Click ‘OK’ on the Process-Complete notification.

  7. You will now see the Holiday listed in Transactions for the observed date.

     

     

Setting-up/Selecting Payroll Groups

  1. Navigate to Employees->Labor Tab.

  2. Click the link in the ‘Group’ field to open to the ‘Select a Payroll Group’ popup.

  3. To add a new Payroll Group: Right-click in the panel and select ‘Add’. Otherwise, select an existing Payroll Group and skip to step #5.

  4. Enter a name for your Payroll Group and hit Enter.

  5. Click ‘Close’