There will be a number of accruing leave types set up in your Chris21 database. These were configured when your Chris21 system was first implemented. Common accruing leave types include Annual Leave, Sick Leave and Long Service Leave, although there may be others depending on your organisation’s requirements.

Accruing leave types are configured on the Accrual Rules (LVR) form in Chris21. An LVR record must be created for any leave type that you want to accrue. The Accrual Rules form lets you define how much leave to accrue and how that accrual displays on your leave Balances (LAC) form. See my blog Chris21 Leave Accruals Configuration for more information about this.

When you query an employee’s leave balances in Chris21 you will see the Current Entitlement and Current Accrual displayed in days and hours. If you change the As At Date on the Leave Balances (LAC) form and click the Query Balances button you may notice the leave balances change. The new values that are displayed are calculated according to the configuration of your Accrual Rules (LVR) form.

The main drawback of using the LAC form to query leave balances in Chris21 is that you can only display the balances of one employee at a time. While this is fine in many circumstances, there will be times when you want to extract the leave balances for a group of employees or even for all of the employees in your database.

How to extract leave balances in Chris21 for multiple employees

When you want to extract the leave balances for multiple employees you can use the Report Designer to create leave balance reports. As with any other report you can include any of the fields that appear on the leave Balances (LAC) form in your report.

When creating Chris21 leave balance reports, a useful tip is to make sure that you include the As At Date field in your report. This is important because leave balances can change on a daily basis and the As At Date will highlight the date when the balances were current. In other words, if someone is reviewing the report two weeks after it was produced they should be aware that the balances will be slightly out of date.

It’s worth noting that the As At Date will default to today’s date so your report will show leave balances current as at the date the report is run. If you want to produce a report that shows leave balances as at a different date, you can use the Update Leave (LVU) process.

The effect of the Update Leave (LVU) process on your Chris21 leave balance reports

The Update Leave process is used by payroll to determine leave balances as at a given date rather than today’s date. See my blog Chris21 Leave Balances Don’t Look Right? Try This Tip for more information about the Update Leave process.

One of the main advantages of the Leave Update (LVU) process is that it will update the leave of a group of employees and report the balances that will be current at that date. In other words, it is just the same as you entering a new date in the As At Date on LAC except it will recalculate the balances for multiple employees rather than just one employee. When you run your report, the As At Date will be the same as the date you set on the Update Leave process.

Below is a screenshot of the Update Leave (LVU) form in Chris21:

After running this Update Leave process you can then run your leave balance reports to show projected leave balances as at 30 June 2016. The leave balances that are generated by the Update Leave process are stored on the EMLAC.DAT file. There are many cases where this type of report could be useful. For instance, a manager may want to know what the leave balances of his or her staff will be at a given time in the future, perhaps at the end of the financial year.

One final tip. Once you have run your Chris21 leave balance reports it is good practice to re-run the LVU process to set the date back to today’s date. This effectively refreshes the EMLAC.DAT file so that balances as at today are stored.  It’s important to do this because running LVU is a system update which effects all users of Chris21. This is another reason why it’s a good idea to have the As At Date as a field on your report. It’s a visual check that you are reporting over the correct date.

The post Chris21 Leave Balance Reports appeared first on System Logic.

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.

The post Chris21 Leave Balances Don’t Look Right? Try This Tip appeared first on System Logic.

HR21 is a highly configurable system since the upgrade to what is commonly referred to as ‘Version 3’. This means that you can do most of the customisations yourself by updating the data dictionary settings in your Chris21 system. For some background information see my blog HR21 Implementation – Some Useful Information.

If you are considering making major changes to your HR21 setup you will need someone in your organisation with a sound knowledge of the Chris21 data dictionary and who knows how to customise the system. Since not many organisations have this level of expertise on hand it may be necessary to seek outside help for this. I’ve helped many clients with this type of work. Feel free to contact me tony.danher@systemlogic.com.au if you need some further advice.

How do you configure the leave balances display in HR21?

For the purposes of this topic you will be happy to know that this is a very straightforward task. You will need access to the Payment Rules (LTR) form in Chris21. The Payment Rules form is part of the leave rules collection of forms and is used when initially setting up the leave rules applicable to your organisation. A typical Payment Rules configuration for Sick Leave is shown below:

The field to look for here is Hide from Interface. This is the field that determines your leave balances display in HR21. If this field is unchecked then the leave type will be displayed in HR21, if it’s checked then the leave type will not be displayed.

Note: this doesn’t affect the way leave balances display in Chris21, it is only HR21.

In the screenshot shown above, the leave balances display in HR21 will include Sick Leave for all employees in the Standard (STD) leave group. Bear in mind that you will need to review all of your leave groups and make sure the Hide from Interface flag is set appropriately for each leave type in each leave group.

The post How to Configure Your Leave Balances Display in HR21 appeared first on System Logic.

You have many options for configuring the display of leave accruals in Chris21. Consider the screenshot below:

With this setup the annual leave accrual will become Current Entitlement each month on the employee’s anniversary date at a rate of 1.6666667 days per month. After 12 months the employee would have accrued 20 days annual leave (less any leave taken in the period). To determine how this accrual displays in Chris21 and HR21 look at the Accrual Frequency and Accrual Units fields. In our example, Accrual Frequency is set to 1 and Accrual Units is set to D (Days). This means that the Current Accrual will be displayed on a daily basis.

Your system might be configured so that the accrual doesn’t become an entitlement until the full year has been completed. This is done as shown below:

Regardless of when accrued leave becomes entitlement, the way accrued leave is displayed will be the same as in the first example. Both will show the Current Accrual balance increasing on a daily basis. The difference being that in the first example employees will receive their entitlement at the end of each month while in the second example they will have to wait until the end of each full year of service before they receive it.

But what if you don’t want to show the Current Accrual balance on a daily basis? You may have a requirement to show the balance at the end of each week or at the end of each month. To do this you need to adjust the Accrual Frequency and Accrual Units fields. The example below shows how to set these fields to display the balance accruing on a weekly basis:

In this example the employee will receive their entitlement after each full year of service, however the Current Accrual balance will be displayed on a weekly basis. If you wanted to display accruals monthly you would set Accrual Frequency to 1 and Accrual Units to M.

For some leave types you may not want to show accruing leave at all. This might be the case with Sick leave. You can hide Current Accruals from display and only show the Current Entitlement balance. To do this, select the Suppress Accruals checkbox:

In our example of Annual leave above, the leave will still accrue in the background but the Current Accrual will always display zero on the Balances (LAC) form in Chris21 and in HR21. Employees will be able to see their Current Entitlement balance in HR21 when they have reached their Next Entitlement Date.

Remember that changes to leave Accrual Rules (LVR) records will force Chris21 to recalculate leave balances for each employee from their service start dates. For this reason you should ensure that any changes are made in your test system. This way you are free to make changes and then review the effects of these changes prior to updating your production system.

The post Displaying Leave Accruals in Chris21 appeared first on System Logic.

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 1^st 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.

The post Chris21 Leave Accruals Configuration appeared first on System Logic.

The standard way to view leave balances is using the Balances (LAC) form. You will be familiar with the Chris21 Leave Balances form:

The limitation of this form is that it only lets you view one leave type at a time for the selected employee. So to view another leave type you need to go to the list of leave types, select the new one to view and then click Query Balances.

This is usually sufficient for payroll purposes because often you will only be concerned with a particular leave type when, for instance, answering a query from an employee. But there are times when it is useful to view all of an employee’s leave balances in one display.

Consider the leave balances summary you see in HR21. As a HR21 user you click the Leave Balances link and can view your current leave balances. Bear in mind that the leave balances you see may not be all available leave types – it will depend on how this has been configured in your organisation.

The leave balances that are displayed in HR21 come from the Balance Summary (LBS) form in Chris21. To configure the system so that you can see this form as a Chris21 user, all you need to do is add LBS to your security profile. Also make sure that LBS is included in your menu. See my blog How to Use the Chris21 Menu Designer for more information.

After updating your security and menu configurations you will now be able to access the Balance Summary form from Chris21.

You can now view all Chris21 leave balances for a selected employee in the one display. In addition, this view also shows any future leave that has been booked. By default, the display will only show the leave types that are displayed in HR21. To show all leave types, select the Show Hidden Leave Types checkbox.

The post Switch to an Improved Chris21 Leave Balances Summary Display appeared first on System Logic.