Employee Leave Tracking

Overview

Leave tracking in Veracross encompasses several aspects of employee time-off:

1. Time-Off Balances
   The allotted balance per category that a faculty or staff member has available in a given school year.
2. Request for Time-Off
   The school enters a time-off request for a faculty or staff member.
3. Substitute Management
   A request for a substitute is generated from the time-off request record. Substitutes are then assigned to a class by HR.

Time-Off Balances

Time-Off Categories

Managing faculty/staff members’ time-off begins with time-off balances. Veracross understands time-off balances in terms of categories. Categories represent the various types or reasons an employee could be requesting time-off. Examples of categories include sick leave, vacation time, personal time, professional development, etc. Each staff and faculty member will have a specific balance for each category of time-off allowed. Categories and balances are school defined (usually at the time the school acquires the Employment module).

Schools may opt to calculate time-off balances in either hours or days. Use the system parameter “Staff_Attendance_Tracking” to set which unit time-off should be calculated. Enter a “1” in the “Public” column to track time-off in days, or a “2” to track in hours.

Time Off tab

The Time Off tab on the faculty/staff person detail screen displays the time-off balances allotted to the particular faculty/staff member and how much of that balance has been used per time-off category. The time-off tab is school year specific. It is possible to setup categories to allow rollover from year to year. This means that a faculty/staff members time-off tab will display their balances for the current school year and any rollover time they have accrued.

Time-Off Balance

Schools may define how much each faculty and staff member is allotted for time-off per time-off categories.

Time-Off Balance Calculation

Time-off balances are calculated based on information entered through time-off request records. For each time-off category multiple attendance status codes can be linked to the category. When the time-off request is entered with a particular attendance status specified, the time-off hours will subtract from the time-off category associated with that attendance status. Time-off categories are associated with attendance statuses using the “Attendance Status Code” located under the Academics section on the System homepage. Choose from the “Time Off Category” drop-down for all faculty/staff specific attendance statuses. Each attendance status should have one time-off category associated with it, but more than one attendance status can be associated with one time-off category.

For example: the time-off category “Annual/Vacation” might be linked to the following attendance statuses: Absent-Excused and Not Expected. Whenever one of these attendance statuses is used on the time-off request, the faculty/staffs total balance for the time-off category “Annual/Vacation” will update accordingly.

Rolling Over Time-Off Balances to the New Year

At the end of the school year, many schools choose to roll over any remaining time off staff/faculty members may have to the next school year. In order to perform this process, the school should create a spreadsheet with the time off balances by person for each category that they wish to roll over BEFORE the school year is closed. Then, contact your Account Manager and send the spreadsheet to them so the balances can be manually entered once the school year has been successfully closed. As this is being entered manually, the exact wordage of the column headers is not as important, but they should be easily understood to ease the input process.

There is no set timetable for this process needing to be completed — that is entirely up to each individual school and how they manage their employment year. Many schools end their employment year at the start of the new fiscal year (October 1st being the new standard, July 1st being the old). Some consider the Employment year ending with the Academic Year, and some still determine the end of the Employment Year being the day before the new Academic Year starts. Schools seeking to utilize this functionality should discuss this with their Account Manager so they are able to set up an optimal workflow for their specific school’s situation.

Time-Off Balance Reports

To help keep track of faculty/staff balances there are three reports available under the Reports section of the Employment homepage which offer a summarized view of faculty and staff time-off balances.

Faculty Balances

A report displaying all employees with the role “Staff, Faculty” and their total time-off balances per time-off category. Negative balances (colored red) indicate a faculty/staff member has exceeded their balance allowed for that category.

Time Off Taken by Category for Wk

A report displaying all time-off taken in the current week (i.e. begin date is the first day attendance is tracked for the week) for employees with the role “Staff, Faculty.” Results will display the total number of attendance records for that particular person within the specified time range.

Faculty/Staff Close to Exceeding Balance

A report displaying amount allowed, balance remaining, and percentage used for all faculty and staff members who have used more than 75% of their allotted time-off balance in any of their time-off categories.

Time-Off Request Management

A request for time-off can be entered via HR as a Faculty/Staff Attendance Record (an option on the Employment Homepage under General). The fields should be completed on the new faculty attendance detail screen. This will create a new attendance record with the requested time off being accounted for.

HR can also enter Time Off Requests via Axiom that mimic what would appear if an employee had submitted the request via a Portal. These requests will still need to be approved by the appropriate manager.

To submit a Faculty/Staff Attendance Record, the following fields should be completed on the new faculty attendance detail screen:

• Person: the name of the faculty/staff member requesting the time-off.
• Date: the date in which the person will be absent.
• Status: the attendance status for the person for the day they will be absent (i.e. absent-excused, half-day off, not expected, etc.).
• Late Arrival Time/Early Departure Time/Return Time: record the times the person is expected to arrive, leave, or return if they will not be absent for a full day.
• Time Off Hours: the total number of hours the person is requesting to be out.

The remaining fields (substitute required and substitute) and tab are related to substitute tracking. See the substitute tracking section below.

Important Note
All master attendance records for faculty and staff are created seven days in advance with the attendance status “present.” All requests for time-off that are further than seven days out should be entered through a “Add a Time-Off Request” link on the Employment homepage. This will create a new master attendance record for that particular day the faculty/staff member will be out. For time-off requests made within seven days, the existing master attendance record should be updated. Schools can use the “Find Staff Attendance” query located under the General section on the System homepage to find the attendance record for the day the faculty/staff member is requesting off. The record can then be updated accordingly.

Substitute Tracking

Part of time-off management for faculty members will be assigning substitutes to cover for their classes during their absence. Substitutes can be assigned for the teacher for the entire day or per class section. At the time the faculty member requests time-off, a request of a substitute can be indicated on the time-off request record (i.e. master attendance record) using the “Substitute Required” checkbox. This will update the report “Substitutes Needed.” The HR staff member in charge of assigning substitutes can review this report and assign the substitute from the master attendance record.

When a substitute is assigned to cover a teacher using the “Substitute” field on the master attendance record, this indicates that this substitute will cover all the teacher’s class for the day. Exceptions to this can be managed at the class section level. For each class section that a teacher instructs that day, a different substitute may be assigned using the class attendance record. Substitutes requested for an individual class section will appear in the “Substitutes Needed – by Class” report.

Substitute Reports

A number of reports to facilitate the selection of a substitute for a class are available under the Reports section on the Employment homepage. Substitutes may be selected based on the faculty members they have subbed for previously, subjects they have subbed for previously, or select from the list of all substitutes available at the school.