Absence Elements
Each element you define and associate with an absence type has an input value with either hours or days as its unit of measure. To maintain a running total of the hours or days a employee has taken for an absence type, this input value is said to hold an increasing balance.
As you would expect, an increasing balance for an absence type starts with no time entered, and increases as you enter employees' hours or days absent. For example, if the absence type Compassionate Leave has an increasing balance, the balance starts from zero for each employee and increases by the number of hours entered for each absence of this type.
| Hours
| Hours in decimal format
| (none)
|
Increasing balances are appropriate for most or all absence types. For absence types for which your enterprise sets a maximum time allowed, the system issue a message when an entry of time absent exceeds this maximum, or Oracle Alert can notify you when an employee reaches the maximum time or takes excess time.
See: Oracle Alert User's Guide
When defining an absence type for a PTO accrual plan, you give it an increasing balance that will show accrued time the employee has used. To see the amount of accrued time a plan participant has available for use as vacation or sick leave, you use the Accruals window.
See: Reviewing Employees' PTO Accruals
Decreasing Balances of Time Remaining
If your enterprise sets a maximum time allowed for an absence type that is not connected to a PTO accrual plan, you have the option of setting up a decreasing balance for this type, instead of an increasing balance.
For example, suppose your enterprise allows certain employees 32 hours leave per year for professional development. The Professional Leave absence element can have a decreasing balance, and an initial entry of 32 hours.
| Amount
| Hours in decimal format
| 32
|
If you record an employee absence of 4 hours for this absence type, the decreasing balance shows 28 hours still available to be taken.
Decreasing absence balances require more maintenance than increasing balances. They need a prorated initial balance entry for all eligible new hires throughout the year, and require resetting each year for all eligible employees.
Notice that an absence element cannot have both a decreasing and an increasing balance; it has one or the other.
Oracle HRMS provides two ways to initialize both increasing and decreasing absence balances at the year's start, and to enter initial amounts of any decreasing balances:
- the Element Entries window, for individual employees
- the MIX batch entry facility, for batches of employees.
You can reference absence time taken (amount of an increasing balance) or absence time remaining (amount of a decreasing balance) for absence types in formulas for earnings, deductions, or other items Oracle Payroll processes in payroll runs. When defining the input value to hold the absence balance for an absence type's element, you can check the Database Item box. Entries to this input value then become database items that formulas for payroll calculations can access.
See Also
Absence Management Setup Steps
