The rules for Chris21 leave accruals must be configured for each of your accruing leave types. The most common of these are annual, long service and sick leave but there could be others depending on your organisation’s requirements. If we look at the common three you will be aware that the leave accrues in a different manner for each, usually due to legislation or other workplace agreements.
You configure Chris21 leave accruals using the Accrual Rules (LVR) form. Fortunately LVR offers many options for configuring accruing leave so you should be able to set yours up to meet your requirements.
If you’re not entirely satisfied with the way your Chris21 leave accruals have been setup it may be that you need to review LVR to determine if there is a better way of configuring your accruing leave. Since leave rules are setup when your Chris21 system is initially implemented, it’s not surprising that this type of review is necessary given that your organisation’s requirements for accruing leave may change over the years.
You also know it’s time to review your leave accruals if you are spending time manually adjusting leave to make sure it is calculated correctly. LVR, when set up correctly, will be able to accurately calculate each of your accruing leave types.
Before you make any changes to your accrual rules you need to have a good understanding of all of the functionality and how to use it.
An important note: be careful when changing your accrual rules setup because it will recalculate employee leave balances. It’s always advisable to make changes in your test system and check that the results are what you want before making any changes in your production system.
Below is a screenshot of the Chris21 Leave Accruals (LVR) form:
This is the typical setup for Sick leave accrual. In this example, Sick leave will accrue at 12 days per year. This will accrue in advance on 1st July and happen once per year. You define this using the following fields:
Type is Advance, Days is the number of days of leave that is accrued, Period and Units is the period to elapse before the next entitlement is due. So from the example above you can see that Sick leave will accrue at 12 days once per year. Also that this accrual will be in advance, in other words, the 12 days accrued will be for the following 12 months. The other important setting here is the Entitlement Time. This is where you define the particular day that the entitlement is to be granted. If you leave this blank then the entitlement will be granted on the Service Start date for each employee.
The previous example was a very straightforward configuration. But what about a more complicated scenario such as long service leave? This is a good example of leave that will accrue differently depending on years of service.
For instance, a requirement for long service leave might be to accrue seven days per year for the first seven years. However, the entitlement is not granted until seven years service has been completed. After this time, leave will accrue at 15 days per year and the entitlement will be granted at the end of each completed year’s service. In this case, we need two LVR records to configure Chris21 to correctly calculate the accrual:
This is the first LVR record where the Period Length is set to seven years. After an employee has completed seven years service the entitlement of 63 days will be granted. Type is Service, meaning the entitlement will be granted on the employee’s Service Start anniversary. Period and Unit is 7 years. Therefore the 63 days will become an entitlement after seven years service has been completed.
A second LVR record must be created to continue accruing long service leave after the first seven years:
The second LVR record will continue accruing long service leave at 15 days per year and this will be added to the entitlement at the end of each completed year of service.
You can add more LVR records to a leave type if the accrual rules are more complicated.
In my next blog I will describe the other important part of Chris21 leave accruals configuration. Namely, how an accrual will be displayed in employee leave balances. For instance, do you want the accrual to be displayed daily, weekly, monthly or on the anniversary of the Service Start date?
I mentioned earlier in this article that care must be taken when changing established accrual rules. This is because a change will cause Chris21 to recalculate the accrued leave for affected employees from their service start date. Therefore, a change could cause an increase or a decrease in the associated leave balances for employees. If this is the case, leave adjustments using the Adjustments (LVA) form may be required. You can contact me if you need more advice about this. Or leave a comment so that I can share the answer with other readers.
Is there a known way of flagging Leave Accruals to calculate at 50% when a leave type of Half Pay is in use?
We have employees who take annual leave at half pay, and the system will pay them correctly at half pay and the balances will be reduced correctly. However, when the leave accrues during the period taken at half pay etc, the accrual rate is still calculating as if it were 100%.
Hi Pauline,
Yes, there are two things going on here. One is payment at half rate which is done via payment rules and the other is accruals. I think you would have to put those people into their own leave group and configure the annual leave to accrue at half rate, eg, 10 days per year instead of 20.
I’ll copy this question onto the forum also so someone else might see it.
Regards,
Tony.
Hello
We have an employee who has a Service Length commensurate with their first start date, while their Service Start Date on LAC is earlier, and Chris is not calculating the Service Length based on the Service Start Date, but on the POS Start Date…
Any ideas how to fix that?
Thanks Robert Erasmuson
Hi Robert. I would look at the setup on LAT first. The dates that are set on LAT are critical to how accruals are calculated. See below for an explanation of the various dates on LAT.
The Take-On Balances form is used to create the starting balances for each employee. LAT has three critical dates that will affect the way the leave balances accrue and when entitlements are created.
• Service Start Date. This is the date used to apply the correct leave rules. This is the date from which the leave calculation starts when calculating which period of a set of leave rules an employee is in at any given date. Entitlements/accruals will be given on the anniversary of this date, unless there is an Entitlement Time entered on the appropriate Leave – Accrual Rules form. Cannot be after either Entitlement Date or Set As At Date. Only applicable where a leave type has multiple sets of leave rules, eg, LSL.
• Entitlement Date. The date upon which the calculation of when the employee is to receive further entitlements is based. Must not be before the Service Start Date and not after the Set As At Date. If you choose to make this date before the Set As At Date it will mean that the first period of accrual will be less than it should be. For example, if an employee should accrue 12.5 hours per month but you set the Set As At Date to 15 days ahead of the Entitlement Date then for the first month the employee will only receive half of the 12.5 hours accrual.
• Set As At Date. The date from which the calculation is actually made. No accrual or entitlement will be credited for any period before this date. So that no period of accrual is missed, it is recommended to make it the date on which accrual is made. Must not be before the Service Start Date. This should be the same as the Service Start Date unless you specifically want to delay the start of accruals.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Tony.
Hello,
How do we go about if an employee has 2 positions ( POS and ESP) and is working different award/leave group?
Example, admin gets 4 weeks annual leave and non admin gets 6 weeks.
This person have ESP and I understand accrual is based on the FTE.
how does the system know to properly adjust it?
thanks!
Hi. ESP is used for costing purposes and won’t calculate leave accruals. The system will look at the primary position’s leave group for accruals.
Is LSL able to be set up in weeks as this is how most states require it to be calculated?
An employee changed from FT to PT, however, entitlement date for LSL changed dramatically from 2021 to 2025 when we changed the leave group from FT to PT leave group (although employee was in FT position for more than 10 years). Please note LVR set up for LSL leave type both FT & PT leave group are the same. How can we fix this?
Hello,
How do I go about to set up the forfeiture of unused leave credits. I need to set up the ANN leave credit accrual at 1.25 per month and limit after 2.5 years of accumulation ( which is 37.5 days). Any unused days beyond the 2.5 years of accumulation to be forfeited. I am currently doing this manually in LVA. I need to set this up so that the system can manage this automatically at the end of the year and as at the beginning of the year.