Table of Contents
Overview
Different companies have different policies regarding leftover leave entitlement at the end of the year. Some carry forward a portion of it, others have a 'use it or lose it' approach, and still others pay employees the value of their unused leave; often, organisations use a combined approach.
Whatever your business's policy, Indigo's Global Leave Write Off/Pay Off utility makes it easy for you to apply it to all your employees at once—instead of laboriously handling each staff member's one by one.
Prefer watching videos to reading text? We've got you covered with this video.
💡 Top Tip from our Support Gurus
When employees have an unused leave balance that is more than the maximum amount that your company allows to be carried over, you'll need to write off the rest of the remaining balance. We recommend waiting till the last day of the year to write off this leave, so that it remains available to employees till the last day.
About the Global Leave Write-Off/Pay Off Function
You can find the Global Leave Write-Off/Pay-Off function in the Utilities section of Payroll & Leave.
After clicking the menu item, the Write-off/Pay-off leave details and balances modal will load, showing these details:
Leave Type: the type of leave employees can request.
Leave hours to keep: the number of leave hours to keep.
Remaining Leave Hours: a dropdown showing which action (write off or pay off) will be taken with the remaining leave hours.
Pay Off Roll: the payroll to be linked to the write-off or pay-off.
⚠️ Disclaimer: Writing or Paying off Leave is Non-Reversible! ⚠️
Before using the Global Leave Write-Off/Pay Off utility, you must be absolutely sure you have the correct numbers for:
How much leave is to be carried over for ALL employees.
How much leave is to be paid off for ALL employees.
How much leave is to be written off for ALL employees.
This action is non-reversible—even our Support Superheroes 🦸🏻 cannot undo or fix it if you make a mistake.
Now that that's out of the way, we'll continue with the three most common uses of this utility:
Case 1: Only limited leave can be carried forward
Case 1: Only limited leave can be carried forward
When you need to carry over only a portion of the remaining leave entitlement, and then pay or write off the rest:
Check exactly how much leave is to be carried forward, and check if the remaining leave is to be paid off or written off.
Open the Write-off/Pay-off leave details and balances modal.
Click on the Leave Type field and select the relevant vacation leave from the list.
Enter the number of leave hours to be carried forward in the Leave Hours to Keep field.
In Remaining Leave Hours, choose:
Write Off: if the remaining leave is to be written off, choose this option.
Pay Off: choose this if you need to pay employees for the remaining leave.
Choose an unfinalised payroll from the Pay Off Roll dropdown.
Click Next on the bottom right of the modal.
The modal will change to a list of employees.
📝 A note on Writing Off and Paying Off leave
Regardless of your choice at step 4 above, the columns titled 'Hours to pay off' and 'Hours to write off' in the Update and Process Write Off/Pay Off leave balances grid are calculated and updated automatically.
Check if you need to edit any individual employee's hours to keep and hours to pay off. If so, find the employee's entry in the modal and amend their hours as needed.
When you're ready, if you're sure everything is correct, go ahead and click Process in the bottom right of the modal.
Case 2: All remaining leave is to be paid/written off
Case 2: All remaining leave is to be paid/written off
📝 Note: While writing off leave entitlement, you still need to have an unfinalised payroll available, even though it won't affect any payments.
If your company doesn't carry over any leave, and either pays off or writes off remaining leave at the end of the year, then:
Open the Write-off/Pay-off leave details and balances modal.
Click on the Leave Type field and select the relevant vacation leave from the list.
Enter 0 in the Leave Hours to Keep field.
In Remaining Leave Hours, choose:
Write Off: if the remaining leave is to be written off, choose this option.
Pay Off: choose this if you need to pay employees for the remaining leave.
Choose an unfinalised payroll from the Pay Off Roll dropdown.
Click Next on the bottom right of the modal.
The modal will change to a list of employees.
📝 A note on Writing Off and Paying Off leave
Regardless of your choice at step 4 above, the columns titled 'Hours to pay off' and 'Hours to write off' in the Update and Process Write Off/Pay Off leave balances grid are calculated and updated automatically.
Check if you need to edit any individual employee's hours to keep and hours to pay off. If so, find the employee's entry in the modal and amend their hours as needed.
When you're ready, if you're sure everything is correct, go ahead and click Process.
Case 3: Unlimited leave can be carried forward
Case 3: Unlimited leave can be carried forward
If you have no limit to the leave entitlement that your employees can carry over to the next year, guess what: you can skip this utility entirely! Check out these instructions or this video for full details.
Made a mistake and need to start from scratch before hitting Process? No problem!
Click Back to change the criteria for all employees.
If you need to redo the edits to individual employees, hit Reset Data instead.
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