Time off policies

Time off policies define how vacation and other kinds of time off are earned, used, and managed for your employees.

Overview

A time off policy gathers the rules for one kind of time off. It usually points at a time account, which holds the balance — but the account is optional (see Time off without an account). Rules cover:

• Accrual — How employees earn time off over time
• Usage — Rules for how time can be used
• Carryover — What happens to unused time at year end
• Expiration — When earned time expires

Getting started

To create a time off policy:

1. Go to Settings › Policies
2. Click Add Policy and choose Time Off Policy
3. Give it a name and select an Account — or leave it without one
4. Add accrual plugins to define how time is earned
5. Optionally add usage, carryover, and expiration rules
6. Under Availability, choose which employees the policy applies to, by work country, org unit, and employment terms. Per account, the most specific matching policy wins
7. Click Save

Time off without an account

Some kinds of time off have no fixed entitlement — there is no number of days to keep track of. The common example is time off by agreement (“Fri efter aftale”): a doctor’s appointment, a wedding, a moving day. The employee still has to ask and a manager still has to approve, but no balance is counted.

Leave the account empty for these. The policy still works where it matters:

• Employees can request it, and it appears in the request form like any other type
• Approval rules apply — add Requires approval as usual
• The time off shows on the team calendar and on the timesheet

What it does not get, because there is no balance to track:

• No accrual, carryover or expiration rules
• No row in the employee’s year overview

You can create as many policies without an account as you need — each one is its own kind of time off.

A balance that is never requested

The mirror image of the case above: an account that holds a real balance, and a real floor, that nobody is meant to book days from. A flex balance is the usual one. It grows and shrinks as an employee works more or less than their norm and is settled at the end of each period — spending it by taking a day off is not what it is for.

Turn off Can be requested as time off on the policy. The balance carries on exactly as before: it shows on the dashboard, on the timesheet period card and in the balance views, and its floor is still respected. What stops is the booking:

• It is not offered in the request form, and is never pre-selected there
• It is not offered on the timesheet, neither in the time-off row nor in the list of activities to add
• It does not appear on the time off page or in the year overview
• It never joins an automatic split across several accounts
• A request against it is refused

Time off already booked on the type before you turned the switch off is unaffected — it can still be edited and cancelled. Turning the switch off stops new bookings; it does not undo old ones.

When one account is not enough

A request can draw on several accounts — the last days of this year’s vacation, say, and then time off in lieu. mTime proposes the split itself, taking the accounts in this order:

1. Highest Suggestion priority first — 0 is the lowest
2. Then the account whose balance expires soonest, so nothing is left to lapse
3. Then the name

Leave every priority at 0 and the expiry date decides. Turn on Never suggest this type to keep a type out of the split altogether; employees can still pick it themselves. Every account’s actual balance is spent before any of them is drawn on in advance.

The split is made in whole days: a day the current account cannot cover in full goes entirely to the next account, and what is left on the first one stays unspent. Splitting a single day across two accounts is not supported yet. Employees can change the proposal in the request form.

Sections

How balance consumption works

When an approved time off period starts, the system deducts balance progressively rather than all at once. The period is split into smaller chunks aligned with the employee’s timesheet approval period. Balance is consumed for the current chunk, and the remaining planned days are consumed as each chunk arrives.

Balance is consumed FIFO (first in, first out) — the oldest accruals are used before newer ones. This is important when different accruals have different expiration dates.

Ending time off early

Time off that is already under way is not wiped out when it ends early — it is cut short, and the days already taken stay on record:

• Open-ended time off (such as sick leave) — it is closed from today. See Allow open-ended
• Fixed-duration time off — the remaining days are cancelled and any already-consumed balance for those days is refunded

Employees do this from the Dashboard time off widget: cancelling time off that has started keeps the days already taken and ends it from the first day cancelled. A manager can do the same on the employee’s behalf.

If the policy requires approval, the change goes to the manager first and the time off stays as it is until it is decided. It reaches the manager as an interruption rather than a cancellation, so it is clear that the days already taken are being kept.