Required Module : Human Resources

Introduction

Leave is becoming an increasingly complex item to manage. The variety of leave types is exploding (Paid, Sick, Study and so on.) The different ways of earning, and using leave (even within one company) are getting so complex that knowing who can take leave, and when, and how much is something of a black-art. The Leave Accruement features in TNA 2000 are designed to overcome these difficulties.

Key Concepts

• Leave Types : You're probably familiar with simple leave types, like Paid, Sick and Unpaid leave. TNA 2000 allows you to create your own leave types - up to 250 of them if necessary. (I hope for your sake that you don't need that many...)
   
• Leave Scales : A leave scale is a set of rules that determine how you Earn leave.  For example you might get 1.5 days of leave for each month worked. Or 1 day of leave for every 10 shifts completed and so on.  TNA 2000 allows for an unlimited number of leave scales to be entered.

Using these two concepts together, in the context of employees, we allow you to set a particular employee, to a specific scale, for a particular leave type.

Example : Frank earns 1.5 days per month of paid leave.
Setup : Frank, Paid Leave, Scale of 1.5 days per month.

Of course Frank's scale for Sick leave might be (and probably is) completely different. 

Example : Frank earns 1.5 days per month of paid leave and 10 days a year of sick leave.
Setup : Frank, Paid Leave, Scale of 1.5 days per month.
            Frank, Paid Leave, Scale of 10 days per year

To round off the issue it's also possible for Frank's scale to change.  He might be promoted. Or transferred. So a crucial part of this is the Date.

• So put it all together, leave rules for earning leave are a combination of Leave Type, Employee, Leave Scale and Start Date.

  Leave Configuration

In order to simplify the configuration of leave a Leave Jump-Start has been added to the Configuration module.  You'll find it in this module, in the Jump-Start menu, and it's cunningly called Leave.  This breaks the process down into 5 basic steps;

1. Select Leave Features to Use

The first step is to select which leave features you want to use, and which ones can be turned off. 
Public Holidays : This refers to national, or state holidays.  If your company extends beyond a single nation, or state, then you can choose to use Different Public Holidays in different States.  A more detailed look at this feature is available here.  For the rest of this article we'll assume that you are using Leave Accruement, and that that feature is ticked on.

2. Enter Public Holidays

Assuming the Public Holidays feature is turned on, you can now enter public holidays.  You may find your system is already pre-configured with your holidays. If not enter them here.

3. Create Leave Types

Different Leave Types can, and do behave differently. Thus it is necessary to carefully set up the available leave types giving careful consideration to the various settings.  A detailed description of each setting is available here.

4. Create Leave Scales

Leave Scales can also come in all shapes and sizes.  For a detailed discussion of each option see the document here.

5. Assign Leave Scales to Employees

At first glance this screen may appear to be a bit overwhelming. It is designed to allow you to allocate employees to as many scales as necessary, with a minimum of fuss, but at the same time it does make it full of information.  For a full discussion of this window see here.

Basic Leave Management

Once configured properly leave is managed in the User module. Using this module you are able to put employees on leave, monitor the leave they are earning, and spending, and also change the scales they are on.  This is done either on the individual level, or with many employees at the same time.

In the User Module, go to the Query or Edit menu, to the Information about Employees option. Select the employee to manage from the list, and click on the Leave button.

As you can see the screen has 5 different tabs.  On the first tab (displayed above) is the Leave Summary.  You can enter any date range you like, but be aware that if the To-Date is in the future then future leave will not be included in the summary.

Because the leave calculation can take a few seconds to do, you first set the date-range that you're interested in, along with the leave types you are interested in, and then click on the Calculate button.  This summary is particularly useful to see the overall Leave Status for an employee. 

The next two tabs allow you to view, and manage, the leave taken by the employee. You can choose to do this as a list of information, or via the handy calendar screen.  Again you can choose to display, or not display, any combination of leave types.

Aside : You'll notice there are 4 leave types added to the bottom of the list, that aren't leave types in the normal sense.  These allow you to view public holidays, as well as pending, or unapproved leave.  On the calendar you can also see days when an employee was Absent Without Leave (AWOL).

The Leave Earned tab displays leave as it is earned by the employee.  The type of leave, and the amount of leave (and when it is earned) is set by the Leave Scale rules.  Remember leave is not allocated to an employee, until it has been earned, so future leave is not displayed here.  You can use this tab to manually enter, or remove leave from an employee. If the leave is being removed then enter a negative number for Earned.

Tip : If an employee cashes in leave for example, this would be the place to come to add the necessary adjustment. 

Lastly the Leave Scales tab shows you the current scales assigned to the employee, and also allows you to change the scale of leave that an employee is earning.