What can you setup in Attendance Policy?
The attendance policy, in essence, specifies the basis of how your organization operates in terms of attendance. Specifies if your organization uses a strict or lenient mode, how working hours are to be calculated, what times a payday occurs, and more.
Configuring Attendance Policy
To configure the attendance policy go to Settings > Attendance > Configuration > Attendance Policy.
Calculating total working hours
First check-in and last check-out: This option calculates the time between your first check-in and your last check-out time. In the intervening time, you can check-in and check-out multiple times, which will not be taken into consideration.
Every valid check-in and check-out: This option calculates only the valid check-in and check-out entries. For example, if you check in at 9:00 AM and check out at 11:00 AM and again check in at 12:00 PM, the system will calculate only the hours you were in the office (i.e., between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM) and will not calculate the hours from the time you checked out (11:00 AM to 12:00 PM).
Expected hours per day
Strict mode: Imposes a fixed number of hours for marking an employee present for half and full days. Select the shift hours option to go as per the shift duration set for half and full days. This is a preferred mode of attendance marking if the organization does not want flexible hours of work.
Lenient mode: Implies that the employee needs to mark their attendance at one fixed time every day. In this mode, a valid check-in or check-out in the system itself means that the employee will be marked as present for the day.
Allow overtime and deviation
Enable this option if you want to include and display overtime or deficit time in the attendance entries and reports. This can be used for any pay calculations as well.
Example 1 - Understanding strict, lenient, overtime, and deviation.
In the strict mode, if you have fixed 4 hours as a half-day and 8 hours as a full-day requirement, then if someone is present only for 7 hours, then the system will capture it as a half-day present and a half-day absent. Showing the 1-hour deficit under deviation time. If someone is present for 5 hours, then it will be shown as half-day present and half-day absent, with the deficit of 3 hours shown under deviation time. On the other hand, if someone has worked 10 hours, then it will be shown as a full-day present with an overtime of 2 hours.
In the lenient mode, if you have fixed 8 hours as the minimum working hours required for a day when an employee works for more than 8 hours, it is calculated as overtime, and anything less than 8 hours is calculated as a deviation.
Impose maximum hours per day
This is used to set the maximum working hours for the employees. The maximum working hours can be fixed for both half and full working days in the strict mode. This option is very helpful when you need to set a limit for employee working hours.
If you have enabled overtime for your organization and also enabled maximum working hours, then overtime exceeding the maximum working hours fixed will not be considered overtime.
Round-off
This setting enables you to round off attendance check-in and check-out entries to simplify payroll calculations. It can also provide some flexibility for employees when arriving late to or leaving early from work.
This is how it can work:
An employee's first check-in entry will be rounded off to the start of the shift if it falls within the set minutes.
An employee's last check-out entry will be rounded off to the end of the shift if it falls within the set minutes.
An employee's total worked hours will be rounded off to the expected working hours set by the organization if they fall within the set minutes.
Example 2 - Understanding round-off
Say an employee belongs to the general shift: (9:00 am - 6:00 pm) and the expected working hours in the organization are 8 hours.
These are the configurations set under round off:
Based on the above configurations,
If an employee's first check-in entry is anywhere from 9:01 am to 9:10 am, it will be rounded off to 9:00 am. If the employee's first check-in entry is anytime after 9:10 am, it will not be rounded off.
If an employee's last check-in entry is anywhere from 5:50 PM - 5:59 pm, it will be rounded off to 6:00 pm. If the employee's last check-out is anytime before 5:50 pm, it will not be rounded off.
If an employee's recorded working hours are anywhere between 7 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 59 minutes, it will be rounded off to 8 hours. If the employee's recorded working hours are less than 7 hours and 50 minutes, it will not be rounded off.
Update older attendance entries
This option comes in handy if you have made any changes to any of the settings and want the settings to reflect in attendance entries within a time frame.
Pay day / hours calculation
Select the options to be included in payroll:
This setting helps you define whether you would like to include weekends, holidays, leave, statutory, and non-statutory weekends while calculating the days/hours for pay calculation.
Based on the above selection, the total expected payable days/hours will be reflected in the attendance data for the payroll report.
Example 3 - Understanding payday calculation inclusions
Your total working days in a week are 5 days. Then the total expected payable days for a month will be 4 x 5.
If you include weekends, it means that your total expected payable days for a month will be the total number of days in the month.
If you also include leave here, then the leave applied to the 'Paid' leave policy category for the month will also be included for pay calculation.
Late-night work hours
Use this option if your organization has employees who may also work through the night, exceeding regular work hours, and you want to facilitate separate pay calculations for these hours.
Effective date of policy
Set the date from which the attendance policy that you have curated will become effective in the organization.