WFM HR: Data Uploads Casual Holiday Upload

Overview

This article gives guidance on the preparation of templates for uploading casual staff holidays via a data load. Loading holidays in this way can help to save time as it can be done for multiple employees, all in one go. There are two options available with these data loads:

1. Loading holiday hours that employees have accrued but not taken so that they can then raise holiday requests 
2. Loading holiday hours that employees have taken, so that their holiday 'hours remaining' totals are reduced

Each data load is chargeable and must be booked in with Fourth's Data Team. Please liaise with your Fourth Contact to arrange to have this done.

The Fourth Customer Community can be used to discuss/raise any queries on this subject.

A knowledge article that contains guidance on loading holidays for full, part-time and flexible employees is available. 

Casual Holiday Upload

• To avoid any knock-on effect in Payroll, any rotas for the dates that holidays are being loaded for must be closed

If holidays are loaded on an open rota, the hours will be processed via the Payroll module.

Option 1 - Loading a Balance of Hours into Employee Records

This option is for loading holiday hours accrued but not taken into employee records.

In order to do this, a minus value is loaded onto the system. This then turns the ‘Hours Remaining’ (as shown in Fig.2) into a positive figure and allows those hours to be used in holiday requests by the employee.

In Fig.1, the Hours to be loaded number is provided as a minus value. The Date to be loaded can be any date, but is typically the start date of the current holiday year. Notes can be added to the last column to reference the fact that these are carried over from a previous system.

Fig.1 - Spreadsheet example of an employee's holiday record

As shown in the system example (Fig.2), the minus value load affects the 'Hours Taken’ total and therefore shows in ‘Hours Remaining’ as a positive figure.

Fig.2 -  System example of an employee's holiday record 

Option 2 - Deducting Hours from an Employee’s Balance

If there is a need to deduct hours from an employee’s holiday balance then a positive figure can be used in the ‘Hours to be loaded’ column - see Fig.3 below. This loads as a positive in the system and therefore deducts from the ‘Hours Remaining’ in the system.

Fig.3 - Example of deducting hours from an employee's holiday record

Key Considerations

• Holiday uploads are used to balance employee holiday records, and not to create holiday requests
• Any open Rotas/Schedules in the system that cover the same 'to be loaded 'date should be submitted to Payroll prior to loading, otherwise uploaded holiday values will override any scheduled shifts and feed into Payroll
• Uploaded holiday days or hours will show up in the employees' holiday records and on Schedules/Rotas for those dates
• Employees and managers should be advised not to delete loaded holiday records
• All holidays will be loaded as authorised holidays. It is not possible to load unauthorised or unpaid holidays - these have to be created manually
• Uploaded values are not expected to feed into any system reports or Payroll if the Rotas have been submitted to Payroll
• Data cannot be uploaded against employees with the status 'former' on their records
• Holiday hours cannot be uploaded if the holiday record already exists on the system with the same effective date
• If a holiday record already exists on the system with the same effective date, loading additional values with the same effective date will not override an existing record - an additional record will be loaded for the same day

Template

A template for uploading holidays can be downloaded here: