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Everything about: Absences & Holidays

Employee Vacation Times

With Belbo you can easily keep track of vacation time.



You define the annual vacation entitlement via the target work week. This includes the annual vacation entitlement.

Important: The validity date of the target work week affects the vacation entitlement proportionally for the current year. For example, if you activate the work week only in the middle of the year, the entitlement is automatically reduced to approx. 50% of the stored value.

Calculation methods for vacation time

Depending on the desired calculation method, two variants are available:

Day-based

  • Only whole or half vacation days are taken into account.

  • You do not need to define "hours per vacation day" (enter 0 if necessary).

Example:

Hour-based

  • Ideal if employees have working days of different lengths.

  • The vacation taken is calculated in hours, according to the target working time of the respective day.

  • Here you must define the "hours per vacation day", e.g. for an 80% position = 6.4 hours (80% of 8 hours).

Example:

Tip for setting up the vacation account (when switching to the system)

To correctly manage the vacation balance in the introductory year, we recommend setting a target work week with 0 hours at the beginning of the year.
This way, the full vacation entitlement for the first year is retained.
The actual vacation days taken can then be entered retroactively.

Add vacation

In the following video, we'll show you briefly how to enter vacations. You can find a more detailed video about the duty roster here.





Show school holidays in calendar

You can display vacations in the calendar most easily by creating a recurring task for the vacation period.

In your calendar, this would look something like this - depending on the display options you choose:

Manage Overtime

With Belbo, you can manage overtime very easily.



To record overtime, you need to use the time tracking function. Through this, employees can record their start and end times of their work. If the start or end time is before or after the scheduled work time, this results in overtime or undertime/negative hours.

In the function, you can then view per month how many hours of overtime/negative hours (or generally "hours") the employee has accumulated.

Hour Reduction

If an employee should reduce hours, you should check the employee in at the start of work time on the corresponding day and block the period of desired negative hours with an internal appointment "Overtime Reduction".

Hour Buildup

  1. If an employee should build up hours, you should have the employee check in or out outside of their regular work time. This is time that does not fall within work time but is not bookable online. Therefore, this option is only suitable for spontaneous hour buildup.

  2. If the buildup is to take place planned (long-term), you must enter the additional times in the schedule as work time. Subsequently, a negative time compensation must be entered for this day for the employee so that the target time does not increase as well.

Half Day Vacation

In Belbo können Sie den Urlaub und weitere absences Ihrer Mitarbeiter planen. Sollte ein Mitarbeiter einen halben Tag Urlaub nehmen wollen, können Sie dies eintragen wie folgt.

Create template

  1. Click on "Schedule" in the main menu.
  2. In the schedule you will find the "Settings" link in the top right.
  3. Go to "Absences"

Create an absence here with the following properties:

For each absence, you can specify how many working hours it should count as. Examples include:

  • If an employee works 8 hours a day, a half day of vacation for them is 4 hours long. For a 4-hour absence, you must enter 240 minutes (4 x 60 minutes).
  • If an employee works 5 hours a day, a half day of vacation for them is 2.5 hours long. For a 2.5-hour absence, you must enter 150 minutes (2.5 x 60 minutes).

If you have employees with different working hours, also create different templates for the "half vacation day" case. Name them meaningfully so you can find them easily.

Enter vacation

  1. Click on the day in the schedule on which you want to enter the half day.
  2. In the Working Hours dialog under "Absences", select the correct absence.

Create working hours

If the employee is to work some hours on this day, the remaining working hours of the day must be entered afterwards.

  1. Enter the desired working hours.
  2. Click Save

The schedule then shows both an absence and working hours:

Half vacation day in the calendar

The calendar also then shows both an absence and working hours:

Enter breaks

In the Belbo calendar, you can enter breaks for your employees. During this time, no appointments can be booked and breaks are deducted in the working time statistics.

Enter regular breaks in the schedule

If an employee has regular breaks, you can enter them directly in the schedule and copy them into the future when transferring the shift times.

Application example:
Employee A has a break every Monday from 12:00 – 13:00.

Enter breaks in the schedule
Go to the schedule overview and click on the desired day to which you want to add a break.

Select the start and end time of the break in the Break tab and save the break.


Display of breaks in the schedule
Once breaks are entered, you can recognize them by the highlighted blocks which are entered in each service column of an employee.


Transfer shift times with breaks
Learn how to transfer your shift times into the future in this detailed article. If breaks are scheduled for the shift times to be transferred, they will be transferred as well.

Enter irregular breaks in the calendar

If you determine break times for each day on a short-term basis, you can enter them directly in the calendar.

Application example:
Employee B determines the most suitable break time each day depending on existing appointments and workload.

Select the desired day and drag an appointment at the break start time for the duration of the break. Then select the Break tab in the appointment dialog.

Short video on entering and moving breaks directly in the calendar:

Enter regular breaks in the calendar

To repeat breaks entered in the calendar for six weeks, select the Break tab in the appointment dialog and click Break repetition options. Then select the desired days on which a break of the same length and time should be entered. As soon as you save, all breaks will be entered.

Absences

To be able to enter absences in the calendar and in the schedule, you must create them first in the schedule settings.

You can access this area via
Settings > Schedule > Settings > Absences.

Common absences are, for example, "Vacation", "Vocational School", "Illness", "Days Off", "Further Training".

Create absences

Select + New Absence to create a new absence or click on an existing absence to edit it.

Description
Name of the absence (e.g. Vacation)

Abbreviation
The abbreviation is used in the schedule exports and should consist of a few letters.

Example of abbreviations in the attendance export:


Counts as working time
Some absences like "Further Training" or "Trade Fair" count as working time and should be counted as such in your reports and statistics. Enter the working time in minutes here. Example: 8 hours correspond to a value of 480. Vacation days for part-time employees are calculated at 240 minutes.

Coloring
In the schedule, your absences have different colors, which you can set here.

Example of differently colored absences in the calendar:


Behavior when transferring working times
In the schedule, you can transfer an employee's working times forward over several months. Specify here whether this is a recurring working time that should be transferred. In the event of a schedule change, these will be overwritten as well. Suitable for "Vocational School", "Office Day".

If this option is disabled, this absence will not be transferred. If you enter it in the distant future, it will not be overwritten if you recreate the schedules. Suitable for "Vacation", "Further Training", "Illness".

For more information on schedule transfer, see here.

Count as Training
Counts this absence as training for the employee.

This absence can only be removed manually.
This absence is fixed and can only be manually removed from the schedule. This prevents overwriting by schedule transfer.

Upon entry, retain already entered working times.
Absences automatically remove the working times, breaks and events of the day. However, with this setting you can define that an absence does not do this.

The use cases for this are very specific: If you use certain absences as markers for days that should be visible in the calendar, for example, but have no impact on the schedule, this could be useful for you.

Use absence in the schedule

In the schedule, you can enter absences for the desired days, which are then visible in the calendar and, according to your settings, are counted or not counted as working time in the reports.

Enter absence in the calendar

Click on the desired employee and select "Change Working Times". Then select the desired absence.

Enter vacation for multiple days

View absences in the employee file

In each employee file, you can view all absences entered so far for the employee under the Absences menu item.

For more information on your schedule settings, see here.
Learn how to enter a half-day vacation in the calendar here.

Enter / release holidays

You can display statutory and religious holidays in your Belbo calendar and leave them blank during automatic shift plan transfer if you are generally closed on holidays.

Holiday left blank in the calendar:

Enter holidays

  1. Go to Settings > Shift Plan Settings > Holidays
  2. In "Add additional holiday group" select the holidays that are relevant to you.
    For customers within Germany: Please select the holidays for your own federal state as well as the national holidays, otherwise they will be incomplete.
  3. In the row of each holiday group you can make the following settings:


Leave new working hours blank
means that holidays are automatically left free when new working hours are entered. This day then appears "blank" in the shift plan and in the calendar.
The newly entered working hours also include transferred working hours as well as working hours loaded by the template. This configuration must be made before shift planning in order to be taken into account!


Highlight in calendar
means that holidays are highlighted in the calendar with a small marker.