6. Time Off Settings

The next topic we’re going to look at are the Time Off Settings.   So again, click in the top right-hand corner where your name is.  Click on ‘Settings’ in the dropdown menu, and then on the left-hand side select Employees, and then select Time Off.

The start of the leave year determines when your holiday balances should commence, and when they should also reset.   This defaults to the 1st of January, but you can change it to be an employee’s personal start date,   or a custom start date by simply choosing the month, and then the date. 

In the next Setting you can choose if you want the tracking Time Off default for newly added employees to be either tracked in Accrued hours, or to start with a Standard Allowance of annual days.   Choose here what applies to the majority of your employees.  You can change individual settings on employee profiles if you need to.   As you then add new employees, they will then either start with a balance of 0 hours, or have a standard allowance of days you can set below. 

You must then set the rules for how hours will deduct for your staff when logging Time Off.   You have 3 choices for how to calculate the hours in a Time Off Day.  

If you choose to have a Standard Day, you can put in directly how many Hours will be deducted each day when you log time off for your staff. These can also be changed at an individual level if needed.

If you want to use the calculation most commonly used in the UK,  select the 52 Week Average option. This will work out what the average working day is over 52 weeks for each employee when you log their time off. 

Or you can use the 13-week average calculation which is mostly used in Ireland.  This will work out the average working day over 13 weeks for each employee. 

Next, decide at what percentage your employees should accrue Time Off balances based on their hours worked.  The standard accrual percentage for the UK is 12.07% and for Ireland it is 8%

If needed, you can cap the accrual for your employees, by entering a maximum number here.  This may be necessary for chefs or other staff with long working hours.  Like the other Time Off Settings, this can also be changed on an individual basis. 

When you’re calculating the accrual, you can decide if you want Paid Holiday Time Off to accrue, you can decide if you want Paid Sick Time Off to accrue, and you can also decide if paid Other Time Off should accrue.

You can choose ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on any of these settings. 

When you’re calculating holiday accruals, you can also decide how many decimal places to round to.  If you want to round up the accruals to the nearest hour, choose zero decimal places.  If you’re not sure, we recommend to round to 2 decimal places. 

If you think you have individuals who might have slightly different rules in your business, you can choose to allow for choice on individual settings, but we would recommend keeping this at ‘No’.

For any salary-paid staff, or staff who you choose to give a balance of days for Time Off, you can choose here what their Standard Allowance of holidays per year should be.  This will be the default balance that every employee will receive.  This can be updated on an individual basis.

For Time Off Requests, you can decide how far in advance requests must be put in through the app by employees, and you can also decide if you want employees to view their personal Time Off balance in the employee portal or on My Zimply.  We recommend when starting your account, if you need to update hourly day balances first, that you set this to ‘No’ and you can change it later. 

You can also decide if you want employees to view the Time Off calendar and be able to see when other employees have approved Time Off and whether it will affect their own Time Off Requests.   The calendar can currently only be viewed through the employee portal.

Finally, you can set Holiday Balances to be carried over automatically at the end of the year.  Just select “Yes” here.

You must then enter in the maximum number of holiday carry-over hours and days that can be allowed.

Please note, if you turn on these settings, make sure to not leave the entry blank or no balances will carry over.   Have a look at the blue box here for more information, but if you don’t want to have a limit on your carryovers, put in a very high number like 1000.

When you’re happy with all your settings, remember to click “Save”.

The last setting to configure for Time Off is if you want to assign email alerts for approving Time Off requests.  This is done on a per location basis. 

Click in the top right corner and select Location and Groups from the dropdown menu.  Then click into the individual location.  

In the space provided for Time Off notifications, you can select from a list of users.  Only users with the correct permission to approve Time Off for that location will be in the available list.  

When a Time Off request is then submitted for that location, this user will receive an email notification.