Setting up individual allowances

3 min read By TimeOff Support

Individual allowance lets you give one employee a different leave allowance from their department.

Use this when the employee should not follow the standard department allowance.

For example, you may need an individual allowance for:

part-time employees
employees with custom contracts
new starters
employees with a special agreement
employees who need a different holiday, vacation, or PTO allowance

Individual allowance is a front-loaded allowance.

This means the employee receives a fixed number of days from the start of the company year, or from the start of their employee allowance year, depending on your company settings.

How individual allowance fits with allowance setup

Most companies start with a department allowance.

This gives everyone in the same department the same annual leave or PTO allowance.

Individual allowance overrides the department allowance for one employee.

Use it when the department allowance is right for most people, but one employee needs a different amount.

For a full overview of how allowance works, read: Setting up allowances

Individual allowance or accrual schedule?

There are two common ways to override department allowance for one employee.

Option	What it does	Use it when
Individual allowance	Gives the employee a fixed yearly allowance	The employee should receive a set number of days for the year
Accrual schedule	Releases allowance gradually over time	The employee earns leave monthly, quarterly, or on another schedule

Use Individual allowance for a simple fixed amount.

Use an Accrual schedule when allowance should build up over time.

How to set an individual allowance

To set an individual allowance for one employee:

Go to Employees.
Select the employee whose allowance you want to update.
Open Employee Details.
Go to the Allowance tab.
Click Edit Mode.
Enter the employee’s individual allowance.
Save the changes.

Set individual allowance for an employee in TimeOff.Management

Once saved, this employee will use the individual allowance instead of the department allowance.

Example

Your Full-time department may have a standard allowance of 25 days.

But one employee may have a contract for 20 days.

In this case, you can set that employee’s individual allowance to 20 days.

The rest of the department will continue to use the standard 25-day department allowance.

When not to use individual allowance

Do not use individual allowance for small one-off changes.

For example, do not change the employee’s yearly allowance just to add one extra day, correct a mistake, or record TOIL.

Use an allowance adjustment instead.

Allowance adjustments let admins add or remove days and leave a comment explaining the change. This keeps a clear history.

Check leave types

Leave types control how each request affects allowance.

A leave type can:

deduct from allowance
add to allowance
have no effect on allowance
have its own yearly limit

For example, holiday may deduct from allowance, while working from home may have no effect.

Best practice

Keep your allowance setup simple.

Use department allowance for most employees.

Use individual allowance only when one employee needs a different fixed yearly amount.

Use allowance adjustments for one-off changes.

Use an accrual schedule when leave should be earned over time.