Setup Considerations: Time Off Plans

Administrator Guide

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You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of time off plans. It explains:

Why to set them up.

How they fit into the rest of Workday.

Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.

Security requirements and business process configurations.

Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.

Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What They Are

A time off plan defines rules for entering and tracking 1 or more related time offs. When you set up time off plans, workers and managers can enter time off requests, correct requests, and track the status of requests through self-service pages and reports. Administrators can track, adjust, and manage accrual, time off, and time off plan balances.

Business Benefits

Provides flexibility in creating a variety of time offs that suit the specific requirements of your organization.

Minimize risks as you define optional or required default validation rules for taking time off.

Lower operational costs by tracking time off balances and accruals.

Easily enter and view time off requests in Workday Time Tracking.

Integrate with Payroll to process payments to workers.

Integrate with Workday Scheduling to determine working days for workers.

Use Cases

Workers can track the approval process of a week-long vacation request.

Managers or absence partners can approve pending time off requests.

Absence Administrators can adjust accruals when workers change or lose their accrual eligibility due to a change in employment status.

Absence Administrators can view time off patterns using reports for workers’ absence from work on certain days of the week.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
Do you want to coordinate time off with leave of absence?	You can configure Workday to calculate combined balances for multiple leave types and time offs. You can also report on combined balances. You can suspend a worker's time off accrual when they are on leave. Alternatively, you can prorate the accrual for the period in which the worker is on leave. When you link related leave types and time offs to a source leave type, these conditions apply: Leave types and time offs must use the same unit of time. The multiple-jobs functionality lets you link leave types and time offs, even if they have different position-based settings. You can associate a time off type with one leave type only. Time off requests are subject to the eligibility and validation rules for the leave type and time off.
Do you want to create position-based or worker-based time off plans?	You can create a position-based plan if you want to define and apply eligibility rules, time off validations, and accrual calculations to the worker's primary position or all positions. With position-based plans, Workday applies balances and limits to the position. You can't transfer time off balances from one plan to another when you use position-based plans. You can create worker-based plans if you want to define and apply eligibility rules, time off validations, and accrual calculations to the worker's primary position. You can create a worker-based time off plan, with a time off that requires a position. With worker-based plans, Workday applies balances and limits to the worker. Worker-based plans enable you to transfer time off balances from one plan to another.
How do you want to handle time off and accrual balances?	You can create time off plans that track balances to: Define accruals, including frequencies and limits. Set time off limits. Adjust time offs. Adjust or override accrual calculations. Calculate and store balances. Override time off plan balances. Track paid time separately from unpaid time. Pass time off to Workday Payroll Interface for use in calculations. You can create plans that don't track balances to define eligibility rules and specify unit of time for taking time off. You can't pass time off to Workday Payroll Interface for use in calculations. You can create accrue-as-you-go plans if you want workers to accrue in response to time off requests rather than in weekly or monthly increments. You can connect time offs to payroll earnings.
How do you plan to handle your time off plan policy changes?	You can use effective dating to configure your existing and new time off plans, time offs, and accruals to take effect on a certain date. If the changes align with your period schedule, you can set the effective date to the period start date or period end date.
How would you like to handle a worker's time off plan balance when a worker's eligibility for the plan changes?	You can assign a default time off plan for balance transfer and payout adjustments. You can only transfer time off balances for worker-based (not position-based) time off plans, so if you want to transfer balances from one plan to another, use worker-based time off plans.
How do you want to align your time off plan policy with your payroll period frequency?	You can align time off plan period schedules with payroll period schedules of either: Weekly. Biweekly. Semimonthly. Monthly.
How do you want to handle time off requests when workers exhaust their time off balance?	You can create an absence table with a tier for each time off plan. The request automatically moves to the next tier with available balance when it exhausts the balance of the current tier.
How do you want to handle time off requests when workers are scheduled to work?	If you also use Workday Scheduling, you can configure time off plans to use scheduling shifts to determine working days for workers. This integrated experience between Absence and Scheduling: Frees your frontline managers from double-checking workers' shifts against the dates of their time off requests before approval. Helps workers avoid using their time off balance unnecessarily for days they're not scheduled to work. Reduces sent back or denied requests by giving workers information up front to correct their requests and align with published shifts. Workday enables you to guide workers to only request time off on working days from a published schedule. When they don't have a published schedule, or aren't part of a scheduling organization, Absence validates their requests using the days-to-include settings on the time off plan. You can configure time off plans so that Workday: Restricts requests for time off to days that workers are scheduled to work. Prevents requests for planned time off when workers are scheduled to work. When working days and time off entries change, this can impact absence occurrences and absence table tier splitting. When Workday Scheduling publishes shifts for workers, Workday automatically flags absence occurrences for recalculation if there are changes to working days for workers.

Recommendations

To avoid confusion, hide balances on:

Accrue-as-you-go time off plans, when the balance is zero.

Time off plans that don’t have accruals.

To improve tenant performance:

Configure the country or region in all your time off plans. This also simplifies your eligibility logic.

Configure the holiday calendar before the current year begins.

Configure period schedules for about 2 years before and beyond going live on Workday.

Don't add surplus work schedule calendars. It reduces the time Workday takes to identify workers' calendars based on eligibility rules.

Don't set

Accrual - Adjustments / Overrides Allowed

for accrue-as-you-go plans.

For time offs and accruals in a plan that share the same eligibility rules, accrual limits, and limits for paid time off, define the rules for the time off plan only. Time offs and accruals inherit the rules from the plan.

For workers with unconventional work schedules, create and manually assign individual work schedules.

Override carryover balances for periods that fall before the go-live date, to avoid accruals in Workday before that date.

Prevent workers from entering time off requests before going live in Workday or before a specific date. You can either define an eligibility rule on the time off, or a conditional rule on Request Time Off
and Correct Time Off
business processes.

Schedule processes to store time off balances on a regular basis.

Set the lowest frequency for a period schedule to Weekly
. Don't use Daily
period schedules on time off plans.

To increase efficiency:

And to avoid accrual issues if you rehire a worker, for time off plans that track balances, create a separate termination time off to pay worker's balance upon termination. Assign an eligibility rule to the termination time off such that it's visible only after the worker's termination takes effect.

Configure priorities on your time offs and accruals in the order you want workers to take time off. This configuration removes the need to correct requests if workers enter a request before they accrue the amount requested.

Configure your lower limit calculation to enable workers who accrue their time off at the end of the month to use their time off before accrual. Workers can request time off without accruing the requisite units.

Create a balance period based on the period end date for the time off plan to be available in Absence and Payroll.

If you plan to apply rollback logic to accruals, create an absence table with multiple plans in sequential order.

Workday recommends that workers accrue sufficient time off before they submit their request.

Requirements

All accruals, time offs, and other calculation values associated with a time off plan must use the same unit of time.

When you assign priorities to time offs and accruals of a time off plan, enter unique values.

Specify a balance period, period schedule, time offs, and accruals on a time off plan that tracks balances.

Limitations

After you save a time off plan, you can't edit these fields:

Period Schedule

Track Balance

Unit of Time

Tenant Setup

You can persist absence data for payslips following pay complete on the

Edit Tenant Setup - Payroll

task. This option improves payslip generation performance.

Security

Configure these security domains in the Time Off and Leave functional area:

Domains	Considerations
Assistant	Users can request time off and view balances on Workday Assistant.
Self Service: Worklets: Time Off and Leave	Users can request time off and view balances on these worklets: Time Off Time Off and Leave
Set Up: Time Off	Users can configure the Request Time Off and Correct Time Off business processes.
Set Up: Time Off (Calculations - Absence Specific)	Users can: View, edit, and create time off plans, time offs, time off validations. Create time off plans that don't track balances. Evaluate absence eligibility. Evaluate absence calculations. View, edit, and create absence tables.
Set Up: Time Off (Calculations - Absence Specific) Worker Data: Time Off (Time Off Balances)	Users can create time off plans that track balances.
Set Up: Time Off (General)	Users can create time off types. They can also control access to the time off types by creating rules.

Business Processes

Business Processes	Considerations
Correct Time Off	Enables managers to correct an approved time off request on behalf of a worker.
Job Change	When a worker's eligibility for a time off plan changes, this business process enables you to: Transfer balances from previous to new time off plans. Update time off requests against previous plans. Adjust accruals.
Request Time Off	Enables secured roles to advance pending time off requests when the approver isn't available. When workers use this business process, Workday displays their time off requests on the time entry calendar.
Termination	Enables users to adjust time off balances for terminated workers.

Reporting

Reports	Considerations
Absence Configuration Snapshots	You can use this report to compare configurations across snapshots for a setup object such as an accrual, time off, or time off plan.
Accrual and Time Off Adjustments/Overrides by Batch ID	You can use this report to view time off and accrual adjustments for time off events using batch IDs.
All Balance Periods View Balance Period	You can use these reports to view balance periods and their: Start and end date calculation rules. Period date indicator, which determines the plan year for processing time off entries and accruals, when an absence processing period crosses plan year boundaries.
All Accruals View Accrual View Accrual Snapshot	You can use these reports to view accruals and: Their related time-off plan, unit of time, and limit amounts. Their eligibility, scheduling, and calculation rules. Whether they allow adjustments or overrides. Whether the accrual is configured for Buy Time Off.
All Time Off Plans View Time Off Plan View Time Off Plan Snapshot	You can use these reports to verify the configuration of time off plans as of the effective date, including: Their balance periods, carryover limits, period schedules, and units of time. Whether to process accruals as of the beginning or end of the period. Which accruals add to the balance and time offs that reduce the balance.
Evaluate Absence Calculation	You can use this report to verify configuration of accrual calculations.
Evaluate Absence Eligibility	You can use this report to verify the configuration of calculations and test whether a worker is eligible for a time off plan, time off, or accrual.
Tenant Analyzer	You can use this report to identify time off plans, time offs, and accruals that don't meet Workday recommendations.
Time Off Liability	You can use this report to calculate total time off liability for each worker and time off plans.
Time Off Plan Override Balances by Batch ID	You can use this report to view overrides to time off plan balances using batch IDs.
My Time Off Results by Period Time Off Results by Period Time Off Results by Period for Workers	You can use this report to track accruals and time offs of a worker in a balance period.

Integrations

Web Service	Considerations
Get Absence Inputs	The EIB based on this web service enables you to extract multiple time off plan overrides from Workday.
Put Absence Input	Use this operation to override time off plan balances.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features	Considerations
Payroll	You can link time off plans and payroll earning codes to the same period schedule to align balance periods with payroll periods.
Time Tracking	You can share time off plan period schedules with Time Tracking.
Workday Assistant	Workers can view their existing balance and request time off.
Workday Scheduling	You can configure time off plans to use scheduling shifts to determine working days for workers.

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.

Concept: Effective Dating for Absence

Concept: Entering Time Off in Absence and Time Tracking

Concept: Time Tracking and Absence Management

Create Holiday Calendars

Create Work Schedule Calendars

Manually Adjust or Override a Worker's Accrual

Manually Schedule Storage of Time Off Balances

Steps: Enable Managers to Create and Assign Custom Work Schedules

Steps: Set Up Absence Third-Party Calendar Integration

Steps: Set Up Workday Home

The Next Level: PATT Touchpoints and Reporting

The Next Level: PATT Touchpoints with Assignments