Leave Balances can be imported for all (or some) employees in your company against any leave type which can hold a balance (i.e. not Take Only leave types). This import is done by client Payroll Administrators opposed to the Support Team.
Data must be entered into the supplied template attached to this page using the correct format. Failure to do so will either result in an error for most leave types, or different and incorrect balances being imported in the case of Annual Leave.
Information for filling out the template:
- Do not remove, rename, or add any columns to the import file.
- Column 1 "Company Code": this column must be filled in for every row, however only one code can be used throughout the entire file - i.e. if you need to import for two companies you will need to use two separate import files.
- Column 2 "Employee Code": the unique employee code
- Column 3 "Employee Name": this column must be populated for the file to pass the validation phase, however the data itself is not actually used at all. Feel free to enter a single character for each row if you wish.
- Column 4 "Leave Type": The information in this column must match the Leave Name in the Company tab > Leave Type screen (screenshot below). e.g. Annual Leave is valid, Annual Leave Taken is not a Leave Type and will cause the import to fail.
- Column 5 "Balance": The new balance to import. This value will override the existing balance, and will not add to it. You may see this column sometimes named "Balance in Hours" however this is incorrect - whatever is in this column is what will show up in the Leave Summary Screen, so you will need to import in the correct Leave Units - i.e. if you import a value of 10 and a Leave Type holds a balance in Hours, the employee will end up with 10 hours. If the Leave Type holds a balance in Days the employee would end up with 10 days.
- Column 6 "Balance Includes Accrual": There are two valid values for this column - 'yes' or 'no'. This column is only used for Leave Types which accrue (Annual Leave), so for non accrual leave types use a value of 'no' to get past file validation. For annual leave, this column allows you to tell DataPay whether the balance being imported in column 5 is a combined value of Accrual + Entitlement, or is only Entitlement.
Column 6 Example:
For this example our employee will be half way through their holiday year, with an annual entitlement of 160 hours. In theory they should currently have 80 hours of accrual for this year. The import file has a value of 200 hours in column 5.
If we select 'no' then the system will simply import the value of 200 as Entitlement, and will then use the standard DataPay accrual components in the employees pay packet to calculate their accrual so far. In their Leave Summary screen the employee would have 200 hours entitlement and 80(ish) hours of accrual
If we select 'yes', then the system will calculate what their accrual should be at that point in time (which in this simple example is 80 hours) and reduce the entitlement balance being imported by that amount. In their Leave Summary Screen the employee would have 120 hours of Entitlement and 80 hours of accrual.
When uploading the file, you will also be asked to select the date you wish to calculate the accrual for. This date is only used if the Leave Type being imported accrues (e.g. Annual Leave) and 'yes' is being used in column 6. The date selected should be the Period End Date of the last closed pay run.
Column 4 Screenshot:
Importing:
To import the leave, navigate to the Employee tab > Import Leave Balance > either Selected or All Employees.
Please note:
- For Annual Leave imports we suggest trialing the import with a small number of employees before attempting this on a large scale., to ensure the calculations are working as you expect.
- All leave imported will appear in the bottom / most recent row (year) in the Leave Summary Screen. Leave will not be allocated or split into the entire range of tenure.
- Importing leave will replace the Leave Summary Screen for the employee. This is a permanent process and importing leave cannot be reversed.