In circumstances where an employee is entitled to an amount of leave on the commencement of their employment and/or at the commencement of each anniversary, this can be supported with the “Upfront Leave Grant” option available under Leave Policies.

Example
An employee is entitled to 1 week of wellbeing leave at the commencement of their employment and each year on their anniversary date, rather than accruing the 1 week throughout the 12 months of their service.

The policy could be set up similar to the below (assuming a 38 hour working week);

Create an Upfront Leave Accrual Policy

Navigate to Upfront Leave policy, go to Admin, Policies, Leave Policies.
Click the Add New Leave Policy button.
Give the policy a name and description.
Click on the plus + button to add a Leave Type.
Select Upfront Leave Grant in the Accrual Type field.

Field Name	Description
Entitlement Period	Text field Add a description for the period
Cycle	Length of cycle Options available: Days Weeks Months Years (most common)
Length of Cycle	Number of iterations of the cycle E.g., If Cycle was set as years, then 1 would mean 1 year.
Units Granted on FTE	Number of units in HOURS granted to an employee if they were full time. The FTE ratio is based on the data in the following fields for an employee on their pay policy: Hours in the working week FTE Hours in working week. E.g., The employee’s FTE ratio is 50%. The Units Granted on FTE is 100. The employee would be granted 50 units on their anniversary date. Note: The units specified in the first row of the policy will be granted to the employee based on the Starting Entitlement Period date when this policy is applied to their master record.
Repeating	True/false field. If checked, it means that the period and entitlements on each anniversary are the same. Similar to Entitlement Period, it can be set as false for one or more rows, with the last row set as true.
Actions	Delete Period button to help with editing a policy.
New Entitlement Period	Button to add new and entitlement periods or differing entitlements. E.g., with each 12 month anniversary, the Units Granted on FTE increase.
Add Accrual hours for Applicable Pay Items	If transactions exist for these listed pay items for an employee in a payrun, then additional accruals for this leave type are to occur in the same payrun.
Deduct Accrual hours for Applicable Pay Items	If transactions exist for these listed pay items for an employee in a payrun, then accruals for this leave type are to be deducted in the same payrun. You may want to deduct units for periods where the employee didn’t work, e.g., leave without pay.
Percentage per hour to accrue/deduct	Based on the above two items, the rate at which the accrual is to be added or deducted E.g. Employee took a week of leave without pay. This is equated to 38 hours. The percentage per hour to deduct is 5.7692%. Therefore, in the payrun where the leave without pay is processed, there would be a negative accrual of 2.19 for the leave type linked to the Upfront Leave Grant policy.

Important Considerations

Pay Policies FTE Hours

In order to calculate the employee's FTE ratio, to attached pay policy on the employee must have the Hours in a Working Week and FTE Hours in the working week be populated.

Assigning the policy to an employee

Similar to all other leave policies, it can only be applied to the employee’s master record under the Leave Policies tab.

Note: It is important that you have completed the necessary setup for this leave type, i.e., pay items, accrual type, award policy, provision policies, and anywhere else that is applicable.

Units are to be granted from the Hire Date

If the Commencement Date and the Starting Entitlement Date are set as the Hire Date, the accrual units specified in the first Entitlement Period in the leave policy (based on the employee’s FTE %) will be applied to the employee’s hire date in their first payrun.

If the entitlement period is set as 12 months, the employee will then receive their next block of accrual units on the anniversary of their hire date.

Units are to be granted from the First Anniversary Date

If the employee doesn’t receive any units on their commencement date and only once they have reached their first anniversary date, this can be managed in multiple ways.

Let’s say for the following options that the anniversary period is always every 12 months.

Option 1: Set the first Entitlement Period as 0 units (RECOMMENDED)

Option 2: Change the Starting Entitlement Date
When applying the policy to the employee’s master record, set the Starting Entitlement Date at 12 months after their Hire Date (e.g., 30 June 2024).

Option 3: Change the Commencement Date
When applying the policy to the employee’s master record, set the Commencement Date and Starting Entitlement Date at 12 months after their Hire Date.

Units Are to Be Granted from an Independent Date

An employee can be granted accrual units from a date independent of their hire date. For example, entitlements are granted at the start of each calendar or financial year. This scenario can be supported by following either option 2 or 3 above.

Changes in FTE aren’t pro-rated

Currently, Access Definitiv does not pro-rata the entitlements if an employee changes FTE % throughout the anniversary period.

Access Definitiv simply looks at the FTE ratio on the pay policy at the time of the anniversary and will apply the number of units based on the FTE % for that employee.

Accruals are processed at the anniversary of the Entitlement Period only

Unlike Entitlement Period, accruals are not being calculated in the lead up to an entitlement period. Instead, the accrual units will be processed in full in the payrun that the anniversary period falls in.

The only time changes in accruals will occur outside of the anniversary period is if they need to be added or deducted based on transactions of the pay items listed in the following fields of the leave policy;

Add Accrual hours for Applicable Pay Items
Deduct Accrual hours for Applicable Pay Item

Remove personal leave from a terminated employee

Add employee long service leave balances

Accrual Movement

Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave 2023

Award Rule - Counting the Number of Days Worked

Upfront Leave Grant Accrual Type