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1) Journyx Accrual Calculator Overview 

The Journyx Accrual Calculator is a tool that automatically updates accrual balances based upon administrator-defined rules. Rather than having to manually add time to your employees' sick, vacation, and other paid time off categories, the Accrual Calculator performs these calculations and update the values automatically. 

The accrual balances themselves are stored in the main Journyx application (found in the navigation menu under Management > Users > Accruals). The accrual balances automatically decrease when employees log time against the various pay types, such as sick, vacation, and leave time. In Journyx 10.1, there are some changes to how Accruals work. Perhaps the most important change is that more than one pay type can be associated with the same accrual balance, and that detailed accrual history is available in a report. However, each tier or rule in Accrual Calculator is still associated with a single Pay Type. This is explained in more detail in the section titled "The Accrual Tier Manager"

2) Key Concepts

Accruals - periodic banks of sick, Vacation, personal, and other time which limit the amount of time that an employee can log against that pay types. Accruals are separately defined for each user - there is no 'master definition' of an accrual.

Pay Type - this is a column on the Time Entry screen that can be renamed. Each Accrual is associated with at least one Pay Type. Accrual Tiers are associated with a single Pay type.

Employee Accrual Type - the group into which you will place various employees, depending ton the rules you set up for granting accrual hours.

Employee Accrual Start Date - The date on which you want employees to become eligible for accrual calculations. Some companies do not start calendar calculations until the first day of the next month, so calculations for an employee who starts on the 15th of a month might not start until the 1st of the next month.  

Tiers - these are the accrual award time frames you will define (e.g., 0-5 years, 5-10 years, etc.). So, if employees get 10 days of vacation every year until the beginning of the next tier, which begins at 5 years (60 months).

Floor - this is the beginning of each tier, which in the previous example would be 0 months (to begin awarding accruals immediately) and 60 months (for the 2nd tier).

Override – an exception to the accrual rules you set up when creating your tiers. 

Carryover Limits – how much accrual time employees can carry over into the next year. If you do not allow any carryover time (“Use it or lose it”) then the carryover limit will be 0.0 hours.

Accrual Balance – the amount of sick, vacation, and other paid time off remaining for an employee to take.

3) Installation and Configuration Outline

In general, you will need to do the following in order for the Accrual Calculator to function:

1. Pre-configure Journyx with custom fields
2. Perform a User Import to populate the custom fields
3. Perform an Accrual Import to populate current accrual balances
4. Install the Accrual Calculator tool (unless you are operating on SaaS)
5. Define your accrual “Tiers”
6. Set any specific overrides to the Tiers
7. Set the Tool Settings, found under ToolsTools SettingsImport – Accrual Calculator
8. Define the Accrual Calculator schedule (e.g., bi-weekly, monthly, etc.)
9. Run the Accrual Calculator in Preview mode to see what will happen next time it runs.

4) Preparing Journyx for the Accrual Calculator

Before using the Accrual Calculator, you will need to create two new user Custom Fields: "Employee Accrual Start Date" and "Employee Accrual Type".

4.1) Set up the "Employee Accrual Start Date" custom field

1. Navigate to Configuration → Custom Fields on the Journyx navigation menu.
2. To see if the “Employee Accrual Start Date” User Custom Field already exists in your records, locate the search section just below the Journyx navigation bar. Set the dropdown menu labeled “Custom Field name or description” to “contains” and type “Employee Accrual Start Date” into the associated custom form field. From the dropdown menu labeled “Custom Field type”, select “User Fields.” Click Search. If “Employee Accrual Start Date” appears in the search results, then you can skip to Section 4.2 or modify your field by clicking on its name. If “Employee Accrual Start Date” does not appear, move on to step 3.
3. To create a User Custom Field named "Employee Accrual Start Date", scroll to the bottom of the page and select “User Fields” from the dropdown menu labeled “Custom Field type:”. Click Create.
4. On the resulting Create Custom Field page, type “Employee Accrual Start Date” into the field labeled “Name:” and add a description of your choosing to the custom form field labeled “Description:”.
5. Leave “Visibility:” at Normal.
6. In the “Roles which can report:” section, either accept the defaults or add and subtract different roles depending on who you want to be able to report on the field.
7. Set “Data type:” to Date.
8. Activate the radio button labeled “Text box”.
9. Click Save on the Custom Field page.

4.2) Set up the Employee Accrual Type" Custom Field

1. Navigate to Configuration → Custom Fields on the Journyx navigation menu.
2. To see if the “Employee Accrual Type” User Custom Field already exists in your records, locate the search section just below the Journyx navigation bar. Set the dropdown menu labeled “Custom Field name or description” to “contains” and type “Employee Accrual Type” into the associated custom form field. From the dropdown menu labeled “Custom Field type”, select “User Fields.” Click Search. If “Employee Accrual Type” appears in the search results, then you can either skip to Section 4.3 or modify the custom field by clicking on its name. If “Employee Accrual Type” does not appear, move on to step 3.
3. To create a User Custom Field named "Employee Accrual Type", scroll to the bottom of the page and select “User Fields” from the dropdown menu labeled “Custom Field type:”. Click Create.
4. On the resulting Create Custom Field page, type “Employee Accrual Type” into the custom form field labeled “Name:” and enter a description in the custom form field labeled “Description:”.
5. In the “Roles which can report:” section, either accept the defaults or add and subtract different roles depending on who you want to be able to report on the field.
6. Activate the radio button labeled “Selection list” under “Element type:” and click Save.
7. Click on the link labeled "Manage Selection Values" that should have appeared next to the radio option “Selection list”.
8. In the new window, add employee accrual types to the User Custom Field “Employee Accrual Type” that are appropriate to your organization, such as 'Full Time', 'Discretionary', 'Non Eligible', or 'Part Time'. This is done by entering employee accrual type names in the custom field labeled “New value:” and clicking Save after each value is entered.  Note: You can assign a default value to all users to save configuration time.
9. Click Save and close the window.
10. Click Save on the Custom Field page.

5) Installing the Accrual Calculator Tools

5.1) How to install the Accrual Calculator in Windows

1. Download the Accrual Calculator installer
2. Copy the installer to the C:\Program Files\Journyx\jwt\bin directory.
3. Open the Journyx Command Line Prompt and type: unzip Accrual_Calculator <date> .zip
4. After the file is unzipped, type: cd Accrual_Calculator_ in order to switch into the new directory
5. From the Accural_Calculator_ folder, type: install and then follow the prompts. 

5.2) How to install the Accrual Calculator in Unix/Linux

1. Source the setup file from the /bin directory by typing: ../setup
2. To unzip the file: gunzip <filename> | tar -xvf
3. To switch into the new directory, type: cd Accrual_Calculator_
4. To install the file, type: ./install

6) Pre-Population (User Modification and Accrual Import)

The administrator must set up Accrual Types, Accrual Start Dates, and Balance for each employee. This can either be done manually or via imports. 

6.1) Manually set user fields

1. Navigate to Management > Users > Manage Users 
2. Either click on the user's name who you would like to modify, or select multiple users and click Compare and Modify at the bottom of the screen. 
3.  On the new screen, you will need to modify the following entries under the heading "Custom Fields".

• Employee Accrual Type - select the accrual type for each user you are modifying. The accrual type determines which accrual tier will be applied to this user.
• Employee Accrual Start Date - input the start date for each employee. The employee start date will be used to calculate accrual tiers that are set up to use the employee accrual start date. 

4. Click Save at the bottom of the screen. Note: To create a new user, click Create User at the bottom of the Manage User page. Fill out all fields as you would normally, and include as well the require Accrual Calculator information. When finished, click save

6.2) Import accrual information

You can also run an Accrual Import to load current/beginning balances for existing users. In addition, you can go to Management > Users > Accruals and set up accruals directly in the web interface. Please note that accruals are defined separately for each user. There is no way to define a "master accrual template" and then assign users to that.

1. Navigate to Configuration → Imports → Accrual Import.
2. Click “Help” on the navigation menu and look for the “importing accruals file format” link to review what is needed in your accrual import file. In the same section, you can click on the “Excel accrual import template” to download a file that can be used to build your accrual file import.
3. After you have created and populated your accrual import file, select the requisite radio button and locate the file on your computer or server where your information is stored. Note: accrual imports can be based upon either the Employee Number field or the Username field. If you are going to import accrual balances using the Employee Number (all users have to have Usernames that are unique), your users must have unique employee numbers assigned to them.
4. Click Preview at the bottom of the screen.
5. You will be presented with a list of the information to be imported. If all is correct, click Continue.

7) Accessing, Configuring and Using the Accrual Calculator

After installing the Accrual Calculator, the Accrual Calculator configuration tools will be available in the Navigation Menu under Tools → Accrual. This menu will provide access to the Accrual Tier Manager and Accrual Override Manager, which allow you to customize your organization's accrual settings. 

7.1) The Accrual Tier Manager

The Accrual Tier Manager can be found in the navigation menu under Tools → Accrual → Accrual Tier Manager. This is where you configure the tiers used for calculating and granting accruals.

Within each tier, you grant a certain number of sick, vacation, or other hours to be accrued by each employee following a specified routine interval. This grant amount (Hours Granted) depends on how often you will be running the calculator. For example, if you grant a certain group 10 days of vacation per year and you will be scheduling the calculator to run every month, then the Hours Granted will be:

10 days x 8 hours/day = 80 hours

80 hours / 12 months  = 6.67 hours/months

Each tier has three primary components:

• Employee Accrual Type - which group of users the tier affects, e.g. Full Time.
• Floor (in months) - whent he tier starts, e.g. 0 months
• Pay Type - the pay type to which the tier applied, e.g. Vacation 

Tiers span from one floor to another, so that one tier may be from 0-12 months while the next will be 12- 24 months. So, a selected group of users who are in the same employee accrual type may be granted 10 days of vacation during the first year based on tier one. Then in the second tier you could increase the amount to 15 days in year two.

The Accrual Tier Manager screen shows all existing tiers and their descriptions. Tiers cannot be modified, only created and deleted. Tiers can only be associated with a single Pay Type. However, each accrual bucket can apply to more than one Pay Type. For instance, if you have tiers granting hours to Vacation and Holiday, and a user has a single accrual that uses both Vacation and Holiday, then each grant will be added to the same bucket. This also applies to carryover limits.

7.1.1) Creating an Accrual Tier Manager Record

 To create an Accrual Tier, click Create Record in the lower right corner of the Accrual Tier Manager screen.This will take you to another screen, where you can define the following details of the new tier

• Start Date - date when the tier goes into effect. This should be either the day’s date on which it is created or some time before, unless you are making a new set of tiers to take effect at some point in the future. 
• Employee Accrual Type - select the accrual type for which you would like to apply this set of tiers, e.g. Full Time or Part Time.
• Floor (in months) - the floor defines the amount of time an employee assigned to it has to wait before the accrual award changes. For example, some companies require a 90-day probationary period before granting sick or vacation time, so they would have a 1st Tier floor of 0 months and a 2nd Tier floor of 3 months. The period of each tier is defined by other tiers, such that each tier ends on the last day before the next tier begins.
  Note: For each pay type, there must be a floor that begins at 0 months.
• Pay Type - select the pay type that the accrual tier will be modifying. 
• Hours Granted - set the number of accrual hours to be earned during each accrual period for the selected pay type.
  Note: The Hours Granted field rounds to 2 decimal places, e.g. 3.34.
• Accrual Type - determines whether or not employees can exceed the limit for hours accrued in each category when entering time off. Choose from the following two options: 
  • Hard – employees cannot exceed the limit. 
  • Soft – employees can exceed the limit but will get a warning.
• Default Carryover Limit - defines how many accrued hours can be carried over from one year to the next. There must be a value in this field. If there is no carryover limit for the tier because users may carryover all granted hours, use a large value that will never be earned (e.g. 10,000). 
•  Grant Hours -determines the period for calculating and granting accruals. Choose from the following five options: 
  • Each time Accrual Calculator runs – employees accrue hours every time the Accrual Calculator runs.
  • On employee anniversary date – each employee accrues hours once a year on the employee’s personal anniversary date based on the Employee Accrual Start Date user custom field. 
  • On company anniversary date – employees accrue hours once each year on the company's anniversary date established in the Tool Settings.
  • On pay type anniversary date – each employee accrues hours once a year on the anniversary date set in the special Pay Type custom field, “Accrual Anniversary Date” for the Pay Type specified in the Accrual Tier record.
  • On employee monthly anniversary date – each employee accrues hours once a month on the employee’s personal anniversary date based on the Employee Accrual Start Date.
• Apply Carryover Limit - sets a date to apply carryover limits. Choose from the following five options: 
  • On company anniversary date – carryover limits apply every year on the company's anniversary date.
  • On employee anniversary date – carryover limits apply every year on the employee's personal anniversary date.
  • On pay type anniversary date – carryover limits apply once a year on the anniversary date set in the special Pay Type custom field, “Accrual Anniversary Date” for the Pay Type specified in the Accrual Tier record.
  • On employee monthly anniversary date – carryover limits apply once a month on the employee’s personal anniversary date based on the Accrual Start Date.
  • Never – carryover limits do not apply.
• Apply Carryover Limit Before or After Accrual Grants - determines if the carryover limit is imposed before or after the accrual grants from the user’s various tiers are added. 
• Prorate Accrued Hours - allows you to prorate the hours grant amount based on the amount of time the user works during a given week. Choose from the following four options:
  • Never - grant hours are not prorated based on the hours a user works in a week
  • Always - grant hours are always prorated directly based on the hours a use work in a week
  • Less than User Work Hours Per Week - grant hours are prorated based on the hours a user works in a week, but the prorated grant will not exceed the amount in the user's User Work Hours Per Week field. In other words, the grant proration does not count work hours that exceed the User Work Hours Per Week amount 
  • More than User Work Hours Per Week - grant hours are prorated based on the hours a user works in a week, and the prorated amount will count work hours that exceed the User Work Hours Per Week amount.

After filling out these fields, click save and the new tier will be added to the accrual tier Manager Records page. 

7.1.2) Deleting an Accrual Tier Manager Record

On the Accrual Tier Manager screen, select the tier records which you would like to delete by clicking on their respective check boxes. Once you have selected the records, click Delete. The records will be deleted. 

7.2) The Accrual Override Manager

The Accrual Override Manager is where you view and set up override records, which are exceptions to the rules you set up via the Accrual Tier Manager. The tool can be found in the navigation menu under Tools → Accrual → Accrual Override Manager.

The Accrual Override Manager screen displays all existing accrual overrides. Overrides cannot be modified, only created and deleted. An accrual override is in effect until deleted or replaced by another override.

7.2.1) Create Accrual Override Manger Record

Override records are based on specific users and pay types. To create an Accrual Override Manager Record, click Create Record on the Accrual Override Manager screen.

You will be taken to a new screen where you must fill out all the following fields to define the override record. You may enter values such as 0, do not override, etc. for the fields that do not apply to a specific type of override.

• Start Date– when the override record becomes valid. Either type in a date in the existing format or click on the calendar to select a date. 
• User – select the user to whom the override rule applies. 
• Pay Type – select the pay type to which the override rule applies. Then choose one of the following four options: 
  • Bonus Months - add bonus months of service to a user beyond his or her defined start date. These additional months are used to calculate the user's tier each time the accrual calculator is run.
  • Carryover Limit Override- define a new carryover limit for the user and pay type. This figure overrides the value established in the accrual tier manager
  • Accruals Suspended - choose whether or not you would like to suspend accruals while the override is active
  • Apply Carryover Override - set when you would like the carryover override to begin. Choose from the following three options:
    • On Company anniversary date - override begins on the company anniversary date.
    • On employee anniversary date - override begins on the employee's anniversary date
    • Never - entirely disable carryover for the user.

After filling out all fields as desired, click save. The accrual override record will appear on the Accrual Override Manager screen.

7.2.2) Delete Accrual Override Manage Record

On the Manage Accrual Tier Manager Records page, select the tier definitions which you would like to delete by activating their respective check boxes. Once you have selected the definition, click Delete Selected Accrual Tier Manager Records. The selected definitions will be deleted. 

7.3) Additional Accrual Calculator system settings 

7.3.1) Tool Settings 

There are several additional tools settings for the Accrual Calculator. These can be found in the navigation menu under Tools > Tool Settings 

• Default file location for imports from the server: ignore this field. Melissa Why? Can they not schedule imports? Or is this obsolete because it’s scheduled under accrual imports?
• What is the company anniversary date for calculations? (applied annually): This sets the company anniversary date used for annual grants and carryover calculations. They will be applied on the specified date and every year thereafter.
• Extended messaging and Show warnings for user with no accrual tiers defined? – These settings give you additional information on-screen regarding your configuration. Journyx recommends leaving these settings turned on when rolling out the Accrual Calculator for the
• first time.
• Apply grants in first month of service for all users? – This is a Yes/No setting. Setting to ‘Yes’ will apply grants for users within their first 30 days of service. 30 days is calculated from their ‘Employee Accrual Start Date’ and the run date of the import. If users should not earn grants in the first month of service (30 days) then the setting should be set to ‘No’.
• NOTE: In order for the grant to NOT be given, the months of service (just described) MUST equal 0, and the tool setting for "Apply grants in first month of service for all users?" must be set to "No", and the "Apply Carryover Limit Before or After Accrual Grants" in the actual accrual tier must be set to "After".
• First day of week for calculating prorates grants: Prorated amounts are always calculated and granted on a weekly basis, regardless of the user’s timesheet period. This setting determines the start day for the weekly period used to calculate and grant prorated amounts to all users.
• Pay types that apply toward prorated accrual grants: This setting allows you to choose which pay types will be used to calculate and grant prorated amounts. You can select as many as you like from the list. When users log time against the pay types in these lists, that time will be used to calculate and grant prorated amounts.
• Proration calculations end how many weeks prior to the last completed week? This setting determines how many weeks in the past to calculate and grant prorated amounts based on the most recent complete week. If you update your accruals on a weekly basis, you can set this to 0. If you are running accruals through a prior completed week- count from the most recent completed week back. 0 being the most recent completed week, 1 being one week back from the most recent completed week, 2 being two weeks back and so on. 4 is the maximum number of weeks back.
• Override last run date: The last run date is based on the last time you ran the Accrual Calculator by performing the Accrual Calculator Import. The system uses this date to determine the period for applying accrual changes the next time you run it. Setting an override date ignores the actual run date. If you set an override date, you must also set the value in “Ignore ‘Override last run date’?” to “Use above override”.
• Journyx does not advise using the override date without the assistance of Journyx Support.
• Ignore "Override last run date"? – If there is a date set in the “Override last run date” field, you can use this setting to ignore it, reverting back to the normal behavior of using the actual last run date by selecting, “Use actual last run date.”
• (This is now under ToolsAccrualsAccrual Tier Manager) Is annual carryover limiting applied before or after incrementing each balance? – Select whether or not you would like annual carryover limiting to be applied before or after incrementing each balance.

Click Save after applying your settings.

7.3.2) Custom Tool Access

You can determine which Journyx users should have access to the Accrual Calculator on the Tool Access page, found in the navigation menu under Tools → Tool Access.

This area allows you to grant permission to different roles to see (or not see) the three menu options for the Accrual Calculator: Import-Accrual Calculator, Accrual-Accrual Override Manager and Accrual- Accrual Tier Manager. By default, only users with the Administrator role can see or use the Accrual Calculator. However, you can add additional roles for any or all of the three menu options by selecting names from the accompanying lists. Multiple names can be selected by holding the 'Ctrl' key.

After selecting all users who should have access to the Accrual Calculator, click Save.

8) Running the Accrual Calculator

You can either run the calculator manually every time you want accruals to be added according to tier rules, or you can schedule the calculator to run automatically on a period, such as monthly. The hour awards you define for each tier are applied each time the calculator runs (if specified to be periodic, rather than annual).

To run the Accrual Calculator, go to Tools > Import > Accrual Calculator in the navigation menu.

8.1) Run the Accrual Calculator Manually

1. If you are running any accrual grants with proration earnings, update the necessary Tool Settings for the Import – Accrual Calculator section - namely the ‘Override Last run date’ field and ‘Proration calculations end how many weeks prior to the last completed week’ field.
2. On the Accrual Calculator screen, activate the radio button labeled “Calculate new accrual balances based on Accrual Tiers and Accrual Overrides”.
3. Click Preview, located below the radio options.
4. The resulting screen will display all current user accruals and their resulting numbers after the Accrual Calculator runs. All the users in Journyx will appear on this list, even those who are inactive or hidden. However, those users who do not have an Employee Accrual Start Date assigned will appear at the bottom of the list and can be ignored. NOTE: It is a best practice to delete the date in the Employee Accrual Start field when deactivating users in the system.
5. To run the Accrual Calculator, click Continue at the top of the page. NOTE: Some customers find it helpful to run an Accrual Balance Report prior to importing new accrual calculation earnings. Under ReportsSystem Reports, select User from the Report On section and Accrual Type. Then select Accrual Balance and Accrual Pay Type from the “Show Me” section.  In Journyx 10.1 and higher there is also a “Accrual” type Standard Report. This can show detailed accrual and accrual history information for all of your users.

8.2) Run the Accrual Calculator Automatically

1. On the Accrual Calculator screen, activate the radio button labeled “Create Schedule”.
2. Define the intervals for which you would like accruals to be added.  Note: because of daylight savings time, we do not advise setting the Accrual Calculator to run in the 2 AM slot.
3. You can set a name and email address for sending results.
4. Click Create Schedule, located below the radio options. The Accrual Calculator will run automatically at the scheduled time.

8.3) Delete an Automated Accrual Calculator Schedule

1. All existing automated Accrual Calculator schedules will be located below the Automatic Accrual Calculator radio option. Select the schedule you would like deleted by activating its radio button.
2. Click Delete Schedule, located below the radio options. The automated schedule will be deleted.

9) Support Instructions

Any and all issues with these tools should be reported directly to Journyx's support department via email to support@journyx.com In any error report, please include enough information for the Journyx support team to reproduce the error. Generally, that will include a screen shot or the text of the error message, the steps that you took that caused the error, a copy of your debug.log file, and a fresh database backup.

10) Credits

These tools and documentation fall under the same license agreement as the core Journyx software. Copyright by Journyx, 2019

11) Revision History