This article explains the process of adding your employees' holiday entitlements from your previous system into Rotaready, so that the balances can be tracked automatically in Rotaready going forwards.
⚠️This article is written for customers who are brand new to Rotaready: either about to start their journey, or within the first few weeks of it.
⚠️This article will be more helpful if you're already familiar with the steps for a successful implementation and the types of allowance in Rotaready.
👀 This article has a supporting video which you may prefer to watch.
Approach
The basic premise is to ensure each employee is given an entitlement in Rotaready that accurately reflects their remaining holiday balance from your previous system so that Rotaready can track the balance from there.
The exact steps to achieve this will depend on the quality and availability of the data you have from your previous system, and the types of allowance you'll be using. Most customers will use a mixture of accrual schedules (perhaps 'beginning of accrual year' for salaried staff, and 'each hour worked' for hourly paid staff). The steps below reflect the simplest and most popular approaches.
Beginning of accrual year
There are two common approaches:
Set the Total accrued annually to the employee's full annual entitlement, and Booked to the amount of holiday they have already taken so far this holiday year. This approach will mean that the entitlement for the next holiday year will be automatically set to the full annual entitlement, too.
Set the Total accrued annually to the employee's remaining entitlement, and Booked to zero. You would need to manually set the allowance for the next holiday year to the full annual entitlement, otherwise it will be created automatically to match the entitlement for the allowance you've just added.
Each calendar month
There are two common approaches:
Set the Total accrued to the amount of holiday the employee has accrued year-to-date, up to and including the month your chosen go-live date falls within. Set Booked to the amount of holiday taken so far this holiday year, up to the day before your chosen go-live date. Set the Maximum to accrue to the full year's entitlement.
Set the Total accrued to the employee's remaining entitlement as of the day before your chosen go-live date. Set Booked to zero. Set the Maximum to accrue to the full year's entitlement.
Each hour worked
There are two common approaches:
Set the Total accrued to the amount of holiday the employee has accrued year-to-date, up to the day before your chosen go-live date. Set Booked to the amount of holiday taken so far this holiday year, up to the day before your chosen go-live date.
Set the Total accrued to the employee's remaining entitlement as of the day before your chosen go-live date. Set Booked to zero.
Timings
It's important to complete this task in your first week of using Rotaready for two reasons:
An employee must have a holiday entitlement before any holiday can be added for them (through their own request, or by a manager on their behalf). Adding entitlements as soon as possible therefore pre-empts the questions you'll otherwise receive from your employees and allows you to plan your first rotas around holiday bookings.
Adding an allowance of the 'each hour worked' accrual schedule at a later date has an extra step of manually calculating and including the holiday accrued since starting with Rotaready.
Optional extras
Rotaready can assist with bulk-importing allowances.
Larger businesses may consider a more detailed process known as a full sync. This is where the exact holiday dates your employees have taken (along with future-dated holidays that may have been booked) are imported into Rotaready so that the absence records perfectly align from your previous system.
The cost associated with these optional extras will depend on the amount and quality of the data you have. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more detail.