This topic is intended for system administrators.

Absences

Absences have their own particularities.

• Read about Statutory Holidays below
• Some absences, like vacation, require pre-approval.
• Some absences, like vacation and sick time, come from the employee's time bank.
• Sick time off may be planned or unforeseen.

Entering absences

A user enters absences in the NOW panel by clicking the blue ABSENCE button, or in the ONE-DAY panel by clicking the (+) button and selecting Add an Absence.

This opens a dialog box for the user to choose the absence code, select a reason, and add a note.

• Only absence codes available to the user are shown.
• A pre-approved for this date, will show as the default choice.
• If the absence comes from a time bank, the employee's available balance is shown, which can be expanded for more detail.

Absences planned this week

At the beginning of the week, if the employee has absences planned, a dialog box can be displayed with the dates, to allow the employee to confirm them in advance. Showing this dialog is optional: see configuration.

Once an absences is taken, or hours worked are entered on the date of a planned absence, the absence is no longer considered planned for that date.

In other words, that date is treated as either taken or cancelled, and is no longer included in future planned total for the time bank — even if it is part of a multi-date absence request.

Absence codes (ABSENCE table)

The absence (pay-codes) available are entries in the ABSENCE table, configurable in the Umana desktop application (Administration > Tables > Absence).

Not all entries in the ABSENCE table will be available to an employee. Here is how to control which ones are:

• Only employees matching the selection in the Timesheet filter will see this code.
• Only absence codes with the letter "W" in the Timesheet col options are available on the web.
• An absence code, associated with a time bank which the employee does not have, will not be available.
• If the letter "V" appears in Timesheet col options, then the absence must be pre-approved. If the employee does not have a pre-approved absence on this date, the absence code will not be shown.

Absence rules & validation

The web timesheet knows the balance in the employee's (user's) time banks, so that validation happens right in the browser when the user tries to enter an absence.

Absences can have a few rules other rules as well, such as requiring the absence be taken as full day.

• These are kept with the absence code (ABSENCE reference table.) If you need these on the time-bank plan (APLAN) instead, it can be done with some customization.

  The advantage of putting them on the plan, is that the same absence code can have different rules for different plans (and thus for different employee groups). The disadvantage is that it doesn't work for absences which are not bank-related.

To permit even more customization and flexibility, the Umana web timesheet calls back to the server for validation of each absence entered. The server can use the same validation program as the timesheet does.

• You will notice the green [OK] button on the absence dialog box dims for a moment while the server validates the absence, replying with an OK or an error message.

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Statutory Holidays

A holiday is normally a paid absence with a few more rules. But for employees working on the holiday, or part-timers, it is just a payment (not an absence).

Holiday time bank

Some employee may have a holiday time bank. Holiday banks can work in one of these ways. (These are exclusive choices.)

• At the beginning of the year, the employee gets an annual entitlement (allocation) in his bank for the number of holidays in the year.
• Or, when an employee works on his holiday, the holiday gets deposited in his bank to be taken another date.

What can happen on a holiday?

On a holiday, an employee might

• Take the holiday off
• Work that day and postpone the holiday time-off to a different day.
• Get paid for the holiday and work that day as well (typically at overtime rate)

Configuring those possibilities

What an employee can do on a holiday depends how you configure the HOLRULE table entry that applies to that employee.

Holiday rules are now more flexible in Umana with the HOLRULE table, which lets you create different sets of rules, and even different pay codes, for different employee profiles. (Configured in Umana desktop: Administration > Tables > HOLRULE)

The configurable fields in the HOLRULE table are

1. Any of these options:
   • B = Employee has a holiday bank with annual entitlement of so many days per year.
   • R = Employee can reschedule the holiday to another date.

2. A pay code for an employee working on his holiday. This will probably be paid at time-and-a-half for working on a holiday, but regular time if the holiday is banked.

   If this is not filled in, an employee cannot work and be paid for his holiday that same day. But he can work and bank the holiday; then the regular pay codes apply.

3. A pay code for an employee absent on his holiday.

4. A pay code for an employee banking his holiday (depositing it in the bank when he doesn't take it). Not used for annual holiday bank entitlement.

The list of absence codes to choose from will include the code for a holiday from the applicable HOLRULE table if...

• The day is a scheduled holiday,

• Or, the absence code timesheet-control option includes "W" (show on the web), AND the employee has a non-empty holiday time bank.

  If the absence code timesheet-control option also includes "V" (requires prior approval) then the employee must also have a planned holiday that day (in his absence planner).

If no applicable HOLRULE is found, the employee is treated as a part-timer (see below).

Part-time and casual employees

In order to be fair to employees who don't work a regular schedule, or who work part-time, most provinces have rules about paying holidays in these cases.

• For example, Quebec has the 1/20-rule: For each statutory holiday, an employee must be paid at least 1/20 of what he earned in the past 4 weeks. This corresponds to what full time employees get, because they would have worked 20 days in the past 4 weeks.