This article is written for users with an access level of Location Manager or System Administrator and will look at the difference between tracking leave in hours or days and how to change over.
Why track leave in hours vs days?
In Deputy, you can track leave in either Hours or Days.
While this is ultimately your decision, Deputy recommends tracking in Days for those employees who have a clear allocation of holiday entitlements for the leave calendar year (e.g. 28 days). Typically, these may be salaried workers. For these employees, it would be best to activate an extension that only deducts leave as it is taken.
For staff who work variable shift lengths, and there is less clarity on how much leave they will accrue through a calendar year, it may be best to keep them assigned to leave that is tracked in Hours. For these employees it would be best to activate an extension that accrues and deducts: increases their leave balance as they clock in more hours, and deducts leave balances with any leave taken.
How to switch from tracking leave in hours to days
If you have already started using leave in Deputy and you want to move from tracking in Hours to Days, there are some important steps you need to take, outlined below.
Please note: if you edit a leave entitlement to switch from tracking in Days to Hours (or vice versa), Deputy will not carry over or convert any of the pre-existing employee leave balances you had in Hours.
For example, if you've never used Days for this leave entitlement before, and you switch it from tracking in Hours to Days, employee leave balances will start again from a fresh balance i.e. zero. So you'll need to make sure you carry over the balances manually. You can always switch back to "Hours" in which case the pre-existing balances (hours at the point in time before you switched to Days) will reappear.
Step 1: Have ready a record of up-to-date employee leave balances in Days
If you are moving from Hours to tracking in Days, you will need to have a list of the leave balances for your staff ready, in Days format, for the relevant employees.
Step 2: Edit the relevant leave entitlement to switch to tracking leave in Days
You can either create a new leave condition or edit an existing leave condition to do this. Start by opening Leave Settings (via Business Settings or the Leave Management Dashboard).
If you are editing an existing leave condition, select edit next to the leave condition you are editing.
Within the edit page, select Days from the "Track Leave in" drop-down list.
Step 3: Ensure the right staff have the Days leave entitlement assigned to their profile
Employees who have an existing leave entitlement will continue to have that leave entitlement unless you remove it from their employee profile.
If you've created a new leave entitlement for tracking Holidays in Days, you may want to assign this leave entitlement to the relevant employees - either individually via their employee profiles or in bulk via the People Tab Bulk Actions.
Step 4: Update the leave balances for every individual with the Days leave entitlement
If you have switched an existing leave entitlement to start tracking leave in Days and not Hours, you will need to update their balances because Deputy will not carry over balances from Hours to Days. Use your list of Leave Balances from Step 1, to populate the leave balances.
For example, you may have had an employee who originally had a Leave Balance of 80 hours, once you switch the leave entitlements to Days, you will notice their leave balance will say '0' days. You will now need to add their balance in days manually. e.g. if this employee's standard day is 8 hours (1 day of leave means they would be paid 8 hours of entitlement), their Leave Balance to be entered would be 10, so '10' days.
As a reminder, you can update Leave Balances in three ways:
- from the Leave tab in the individual's employee profile
- edit balances using the Leave Management dashboard (access via Reports tab)
- set leave balances in bulk via People tab (for when you have a number of employees with the same leave balances to be entered)
What about activating leave accruals/deductions?
If you've just edited an existing leave entitlement to track in a different unit of time, this will not affect the leave accrual extension you may have already set up. It will continue to accrue and/or deduct, depending on which option you've activated in the extension (you can edit these in the Locations Settings).
If you've created a new leave entitlement, for example, to track holidays in Days, you will need to activate a new accrual extension for this new leave entitlement.
Again, if you're using a Days leave entitlement, we would recommend activating a Deduct Only leave extension and updating the balance for employees with the full allocation for leave in the leave calendar year.
More information on Leave Management: