Besides scheduling and time tracking functionality, Planday offers you a way to easily manage vacation periods for your employees.
In Denmark, new regulations have been put in place since 2020.
According to the new Danish Holiday Act, employees will be able to take vacation days as they earn them. In other words, Accrued vacation is based on the continuous accumulation of vacation days based on worked hours. Rather than getting a fixed balance of vacation days at the beginning of a year, your employees will earn vacation days — and can use them — as they go.
Setting up Accrued vacation for your organization
In Planday, Accrued vacation is handled in a few steps:
Here is a brief video introduction, to get you started quickly:
1. Create a template Accrued vacation account
The first step for handling accrued vacations for employees starts with creating a template and setting up the shared details.
Go to Settings > Absence, Overtime, Vacation > Account types, and select Create.
Select Accrued vacation account and continue to set up your template:
Name: The account name will help you identify the Absence account template you need when connecting it to an employee's profile.
Description: If there are details that should be specified about your template, this would be a good place to note them.
Renew automatically: If the account should be renewed automatically at the end of the accruing period.
Accruing period for the account through the annual start date (defines which date of the year should the accruing period start or renew) and duration (determines for long your employees can accumulate vacation days is or after how many months the balance will reset).
Spending period for the account also through an annual start date (defines from which date of the year the accumulated vacation days can be used or when they expire) and duration (determines how long your employees will have to spend accumulated vacation days).
According to the new Danish Holiday Act, the accruing period should start on the 1st of September and last for 12 months, while the spending period should start on the 1st of September but last for 16 months.
As an example, this means that the vacation days an employee has accumulated from the 1st of September 2020 to the 1st of September 2021 can be used between the 1st of September 2020 and the 31st of December 2021, as they accumulate.
Click Next to set the specifics for how your employees will accumulate vacation days:
define whether their balance is accumulated/accruing in days or hours.
set the accruing rate which defines the ratio for the accumulation of vacation days per worked period.
set the max. allowance for the number of vacation days an employee can accrue per month or per year. If you don't want to set a maximum limit, simply leave the field empty.
If you set the template to accrue in hours, then the maximum allowance will also have to be set for hourschoose if the requirements for accrual should be based on only the accrual rate, or depend on approved shifts in the schedule.
The Next step in your template creation allows you to set who can use an Absence/vacation account created from this template and how they can use it:
Employee type: which of your employees will the configuration from this template apply for? The employee types in the list will the Employee types you defined under Settings > People > General > Employee types.
Create automatically: If the account should be created automatically for all employees when they are created in the system.
The account will only be created for employees that belong to one of the chosen Employee types above.
depending on your organization's policy, you might allow your employees to take a few vacation days they haven't yet earned. This will appear as a negative balance (until they earn the amount back) and here is where you can decide how many vacation days they would be able to take in advance.
you can also set up a limit for how many vacation days your employees can use in a row. This could be useful if you need to keep a close eye on the work balance for employees, so it can automatically trigger a warning when an employee's request exceeds this limit.
the Carry over option will automatically transfer the unused days to the next accruing period if allowed and within the maximum number of days.
the Salary code can help you automate how the vacation days (and their monetary impact) will appear on the payslips and the payroll reports.
Priority: if your organization requires more than one vacation account per employee, you can decide in the account's template whether it should be used first, last, or simply depend on how many days are left in the account balance.
and lastly, make sure to take into account the Bank Holiday calendar (so your employees don't accidentally use vacation days for legal holidays).
This can also be set individually on each employee's account later.
Click Save and your template account is ready.
Choose shift types for accrued vacation
If you chose the Requirements for accrual to be Approved shifts in the Account type, you will need to choose which shift types that accrue vacation for an employee.
Go to Settings > Absence, Overtime, Vacation > General > Shift types for accrued account.
Here you can choose which shift types that will accrue vacation.
Normal is shifts where no shift type has been selected.
To make sure you have everything covered, check out this video:
2. Create Absence accounts for your employees
Head over to Schedule > Absence accounts to start assigning and attributing Absence accounts to your employees. This is also an overview page that can give you a quick insight into the standing of your employees' vacation accounts.
From the top right corner, click Create and choose whether you want to assign Absence accounts in bulk or configure them individually, per employee.
When you set up vacation accounts for your employees, you are effectively making copies of your template account and filling in the individual details. This will include:
which date will mark the start of the accruing period (if the employee joined after the start of the accruing period in your organization, it should be set to that employee's hired date)
make sure to take into account the Bank Holiday calendar (so your employees don't accidentally use vacation days for legal holidays).
if you are setting this up after the accruing period and the spending period have started, there might be situations in which an employee has already accumulated vacation days or has already been on vacation for a few days. You should those details in the Start balance section.
if you've configured the Carry over setting for the template account (see above), the carry over amount will reflect the number of days you've already allowed.
Save your changes and repeat the process as needed.
When a new accruing period will start, this will automatically be applied to the employees benefiting from a vacation account (from that template).
To make sure you have everything covered, check out this video:
3. Create Absence requests
With the setup done and all the details in place, your employees can request vacation days, as they need.
This video shows how your employees will request vacation, with your setup:
You can share this video with your employees, to have all the info they need to make a vacation request.
As a manager, you can request absence on behalf of your employees. This can be done from Schedule > Absence requests > Register Absence. Choose the employee you will be requesting absence for, select the period and an Absence account and click Next to get to step 2.
In step 2 you will get an overview of the request, and you can make changes before submitting the request.
Once a request has been submitted, you can choose to approve it right away or close the request for later approval.
4. Act on Absence requests
To manage their request, go to Schedule > Absence requests, where you will find an overview for all Absence requests you can manage (or have already approved or denied).
Each request will contain all the information you need to make a decision on the spot on whether to approve the request or not:
who made the request and when
it may contain a note from your employee, explaining why they need/want the vacation days they requested.
the status of the request (highlighting whether it's been already approved or denied by another manager in your organization, for instance)
the vacation periods
the effect of the request on that employee's Absence account
a breakdown per day of the request's cost that will require your confirmation
As an example, if an employee is usually scheduled to work 3 days per week, but would like to have a vacation for a full week, you should make sure that only 3 vacation days are deducted (for the days they would have otherwise worked).a quick way to handle your employee's scheduled shifts, if any are overlapping with the vacation period, and create cover shifts to cover your schedule for this period.
When you approve or deny the request, your employee will be notified and the requested period will be marked in your schedule.
Here's a quick guide for managing vacation requests:
See related articles:
ℹ️ Need more help?
🔍 Search the Help Center | See videos at Tutorials.Planday.com | Watch a webinar
💬 For personalised support
Login and contact our support team via the blue icon at the bottom if you have more questions or book a one-to-one professional training session with an expert.