Leave Policies

A leave policy decides how much vacation and sick leave your team starts with, how it grows over time, and what happens to unused days at the end of the year. ClockTap tracks vacation and sick balances; every accrual, reset, carryover, and approved request is recorded as a transaction, so a balance is always something you can trace back.

There are three places leave is configured, and they stack in this order:

1. Store policy — the default rules everyone in a store inherits.
2. Per-employee policy — an override for one person, when their terms differ.
3. Manual adjustments — a one-off correction to a single balance.

Step 1 — Set the store policy

The store policy is the baseline every employee inherits. Open Stores from the sidebar, open a store's ⋮ menu and choose Edit, then switch to the Leave Policy tab.

Turn on Enable leave policy to start tracking balances for the store. While it's off, no balances, accruals, or resets are recorded. Once enabled, decide how balances are granted:

• Fixed starting balance — leave Enable monthly accrual off and set Starting vacation leave / Starting sick leave, the balance an employee begins with when they join or at the start of a new leave cycle.
• Monthly accrual — turn on Enable monthly accrual if balances should instead grow automatically each month, then set the Vacation and Sick monthly accrual (the days added to each balance every month). Turning accrual on clears the fixed starting balances, since the two are alternatives.
• Reset schedule — when balances reset each year. Every Jan 1 resets everyone on January 1st; Custom Date lets you pick a specific month and day.
• Reset mode — what happens to unused days at reset:
  • Balance Only — unused leave is discarded.
  • Carryover All — all unused leave moves into the next cycle.
  • Carryover Capped — unused leave carries over up to a limit. This reveals Vacation and Sick carryover caps; anything above the cap is forfeited.

Save with Save Changes. The policy applies to every employee in that store who hasn't been given their own.

Leave policies are configured per store, so each branch can run its own accrual and reset rules.

Step 2 — Override the policy for one employee

When a single employee's terms differ — a longer-tenured hire with more vacation, say — give them their own policy instead of changing the store default. Open the employee from the Employees list, choose Edit, and open the Leave Policy tab.

The Leave Policy Mode decides where their rules come from:

• Inherit Store Policy (default) — the employee follows the store policy. Nothing else to set.
• Custom Policy — the employee gets their own rules. The same fields as the store policy appear — starting balances, monthly accrual, reset schedule, reset mode, and carryover caps — and what you set here replaces the store policy for this employee only.

Switching back to Inherit Store Policy at any time drops the override and returns them to the store default.

Step 3 — Make a manual adjustment

Sometimes a balance just needs a one-off correction — granting a few extra days, or clawing back days credited in error — without touching the policy or any past leave requests. On the employee's profile, open Manual Adjustment:

1. Pick the leave type — Vacation or Sick.
2. Enter the amount — a positive number adds days, a negative number removes them.
3. Add a short reason so the transaction history stays clear about why the balance changed.

The adjustment posts immediately and updates the available balance. It shows up in the employee's Leave History as a manual transaction, separate from accruals and requests.

How a balance is built

A balance isn't a single number you edit — it's the running total of everything that's happened to it. On an employee's profile, the Leave Balance tab breaks down where the available figure comes from, and Leave History lists every transaction:

• Opening balance — the starting days from the policy.
• Monthly accrual — days added each month, if accrual is on.
• Carryover — days brought forward from the previous cycle at reset.
• Manual adjustment — your one-off corrections.
• Reservation — days held when an employee files leave from the kiosk, deducted while the request is pending or approved.

Because the balance is the sum of these, every change is auditable — you can always see why a number is what it is.

How it connects to the rest of ClockTap

• Employees file leave from the kiosk, which reserves the days against their balance. See Kiosk.
• Pending leave requests land in Approvals for a manager to approve or reject; rejecting releases the reserved days back. See Managing Approvals.
• Set up a store's leave policy before your team starts filing leave, so balances are right from day one.