Chris21 Leave Balances and the Leave Update Process

From time to time clients will tell me their Chris21 leave balances are not reporting accurately. What shows on their reports is not what shows when they look up a leave balance on the Balances (LAC) form in Chris21. This can cause some unnecessary stress to the report author, particularly when these reports are being delivered to and closely scrutinised by managers.

If you come across this issue the answer is your Leave Update (LVU) process. The Leave Update process can be run in Chris21 at any time and its purpose is to calculate leave balances at a given date. Payroll will usually want to do this during payroll processing so that they can determine leave balances at a point in time. This is important given that some leave balances accrue on a daily basis so they become a ‘moving target’.

How does the Leave Update process work?

You will be aware that you can update Chris21 leave balances for an individual employee by going to LAC, choosing the leave type and then changing the As At Date and clicking Save. This process will recalculate the chosen leave balance for the given date. This date can be in the past or in the future. The Leave Update process essentially works the same way except that you can do it for a group of employees and multiple leave types in a single process.

A problem arises if the Leave Update process is run by Payroll and then another Chris21 user, unaware of this, runs a leave Balances (LAC) report expecting to see current leave balances. The result can be inaccurate leave balances being reported to management groups.

The best way to avoid this situation is to always include the As At Date in your leave Balances (LAC) reports. This way, if the Leave Update process has been run recently then the As At Date will reflect this. If you see an As At Date that does not match the current date then you can be sure that you need to re-run the Leave Update process to get your balances back to the current date. If you do need to re-run the Leave Update process it would be a good idea to let Payroll know!

Keep this tip in mind when running your Chris21 Leave Balances reports so that you can be sure the reports you are publishing contain the most up to date information.