Here, you can, among other things, balance overtime if it has been paid out, for example, and flexibly create absence and leave reasons that should be made available to your employees.
Through the module, you have the following additional menu items in your ZEP:
Absences & Appointments
Enter your absences here (vacation, illness, time off in lieu).reports > Employees > Absence overview
Overview of the absences of employees. Can also be structured by absence reason ("vacation plan").reports > Employees > Working times overview
Here you create a report of the working and absence times of all employees. For each employee, the target and actual working time, paid absence time, and the resulting overtime in a specific period are displayed.reports > Employees > Annual absence days
Display of all absent days per employee over a year.reports > Employees > month-end report
Each employee can use the End-of-month report to find out their current status regarding their working time, overtime, vacation days, remaining leave, etc. In this report, the employee sees the hours worked for each day, how much overtime was incurred per day, how many of those hours were worked on Sundays and public holidays (with surcharge), and the absences.Administration > System > Monthly closing
With the monthly closing, all working times, overtime, and absences for all employees are saved for each month. In a closed month, no more changes can be made! To make changes, the monthly closing can be canceled.Administration > Overtime & Absences > Absence Reasons
Definition of absence reasons.
If you want to use the Absences & Overtime module, you must specify an introduction date in the settings and then click on Change.
Settings
If you use the Absences & Overtime module, you must first make a few basic settings in your ZEP.
These can be found under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Settings.
Here you can make General Settings, settings for absence requests, reports, as well as remaining leave & surcharges. To do this, click either on the paper & pen icon next to the bold headings or on the Change settings button.
Introduction of the overtime, absences and leave module
Specify here starting from which month the overtime, absences and leave module was introduced in ZEP.
From this month onwards, employees must record all their working hours completely, otherwise absences will be calculated.
If you have only recorded a few times for testing and are only using ZEP properly in the following month: enter the month with which you are starting "properly" as the time of introduction here.
For each individual employee in the employee administration, specify the previous year's overtime and the leave entitlement for the current business year (current in this case means from the introduction of the additional module).
You should carry out the monthly closing regularly from this date onwards.
If you have previously managed your absences with an "Absences Project", you may no longer book any times to this project from the introduction of the additional module onwards.
End of the business year
Specify the month with which your business year is closed. This date affects the timing of the employee's leave entitlement if you enter the following in the leave year setting: "Annual leave entitlement always at the beginning of a business year".
Leave year
"Annual leave entitlement always at the beginning of a business year" the leave year corresponds to the business year.
"For each employee, the annual leave entitlement begins on a different date (generally the entry date, common in Austria)" the leave year corresponds to the employee year.
Absence recording & emails for too many overtime hours
"Users are allowed to enter their absences themselves"
Specify here from which role employees are allowed to enter their absences themselves."Allow absence recording in the past"
Specify whether employees are allowed to enter their absences retroactively."Time recording possible on full day of absence"
Define here whether a user is allowed to book times on a day that they have defined as a full day of absence."Should an email be sent to the department head or administrator if there is too much overtime per day?"
Here you can specify that an email is sent if an employee has worked more than a quantity of overtime defined by you.If you set "From this number of overtime hours per day" and enter a number x, the following applies: If an employee records their time and as a result the number of overtime hours on that date exceeds the number x, an email is sent.
The recipient of the email is:
The employee's department head. If there is no department head, or no email address is specified for the department head, the email will be sent to a department head of a higher-level department.
If no email could be sent this way either, the email will be sent to all administrators.
Freelancers and occasionally working assistants are usually managed in ZEP with a regular working time of 0. Therefore, the following applies in ZEP: If the employee has a regular working time of 0 on every day of the week, no overtime notification is sent.
Under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Mail Templates, you can adjust the text of the email. The corresponding mail template is labeled "Notification for too many overtime hours per day".
Absence requests
Recipients of requests for approval of absences
Absence reasons requiring approval can only be approved by administrators or, with the Locations & Departments module, by department heads. Employees can submit a request for approval of absences via email.
Specify who should receive the employee's leave request via email. In most cases, this will be the administrator so that they can approve the requests. Additionally, you can enter any number of other recipient addresses (e.g., HR managers), separated by spaces, commas, or semicolons (depending on the specification under Administration > My Company > Email). Furthermore, the request is always sent to the recipients explicitly specified in the mail template in the master data.
With the Locations & Departments module:
Here, department heads and department heads of higher-level departments are additionally available as recipients. This setting applies to all departments if you do not make any other settings at the department level. (For department-specific settings, see department data: Overtime, absences, leave.)
Request recipients & default setting for the remark
You can also specify whether employees are allowed to see and edit the recipients of the email request when applying for their absences.
In addition, you can pre-assign a text that will be displayed in the remark of the absence request. This text is only a default setting and can be edited by each employee in their absence request.
If you have specified "A department head is allowed to approve their own absences: No", the department head will not receive an email to approve their own request. Thus, it may be possible that there is no recipient (from the list) who can be notified according to the specifications. In this case, the absence request is sent to department heads of higher-level departments, administrators, or additional recipients.
Approving and changing absences
Additionally, you can determine whether only an administrator is allowed to change approved absences and whether a department head (only with the Locations & Departments module) is allowed to approve their own absences.
Contractually settled overtime
This setting is relevant if you have employees in your company whose employment contract contains a regulation regarding overtime settled with the contract.
In this case, you can set the setting "subtract inclusive overtime from the monthly hourly balance" to active under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Settings, as it is inactive by default.
If you have activated this setting, you can specify a value and a calculation type (hours or percent) for the overtime settled with the salary per month as a default for new employees under Administration > Employees > Settings. These values are then automatically adopted for newly created employees.
In the Regular working time menu item of a selected employee, you can adjust the default setting individually.
The option to manually balance overtime and leave remains unaffected by the automatic balancing for contractually settled overtime.
Monthly calculation of settled overtime
Up to x (setting per employee) overtime hours per month are considered as "overtime settled with the salary," meaning they are deducted from the overtime balance.
No more than x is settled per month, and no more than the actual overtime hours worked.
Only the overtime hours generated in that specific month are considered, not the overall overtime balance.
No adjustment occurs in the case of minus hours.
If an employee enters time off in lieu, resulting in minus hours for that month, this has no effect, even if there was or will be a deduction in a previous or subsequent month.
Example 1:
An employee has a contract with 40 regular working hours per month plus 10 overtime hours settled with the salary. If they work 9 overtime hours in September, these 9 hours are entered as settled with the salary.
Example 2:
If they work 13 overtime hours in September, 10 are entered as settled with the salary, meaning 3 overtime hours remain.
Example 3:
In October, the target working time is 107 hours. The employee has booked 95 working hours (because they took the rest as time off in lieu). This results in a minus of 12 hours. No automated balancing is entered.
Reports
Current month up to and including the current day
As a default setting, you can activate the option to set the current day as the end of the period in the reports Employee > month-end, Time sheet overview, Working times overview and (when using the Locations & Departments module) the report Department > reports > Times. When you call up one of these reports, the current day is specified as the end of the period in the default setting for the period. This means that the calculation of overtime for the current month is carried out up to and including the current day.
You can adjust the period at any time as desired; the entire set period is always evaluated.
Note if the last monthly closing was a long time ago
If you carry out monthly closings regularly, you have the security that employees can no longer change the times for the month in question. In addition, some reports will be faster.
In these reports, a note is displayed if the last monthly closing was a long time ago.
Set here after how many months the note should be displayed. The number must be between 1 and 12.
Display overtime balance under My ZEP
Specify whether employees are allowed to see their current overtime balance under reports in the absence calendar, in the month-end report, and in the time sheet overview.
Show remarks on balanced leave + absences in the month-end report
If you want your employees to see in ZEP why overtime or vacation days were balanced, you can optionally set this here. If you have specified "Yes" here, employees will see the remark in their end-of-month report that you entered under Employees > Balance overtime, leave when balancing overtime/vacation days.
In addition to the overtime account, also show the sum of all payable hours (work, paid absence, annual leave, public holidays)
If you place a checkmark here, the following reports change:
month-end report Instead of the "effective hours" column, there is the "payable hours" column. Payable hours are the sum of:
working hours and
paid absence (vacation, illness) and
public holiday hours and
surcharge (special times) and
minus break regulations, if applicable (breaks not observed).
Annual overview Additional "payable hours" column (per month).
Working times overview New column "Payable hours balance".
An employee requires at least the "User with additional rights" permission level to see the absence overview of all employees in reports.
If you activate the checkbox, employees who have the User role cannot see this report. If you do not place a checkmark here, all employees can see the absence overview.
Remaining leave & surcharges
Unused remaining leave from an expired leave year expires automatically during the monthly closing. Optionally specify if and when unused remaining leave from the expired leave year expires automatically during the monthly closing.
Always in the following year in month [Month]
You can specify at which monthly closing this automation is triggered. If you set March, for example, ZEP will automatically delete all old leave days from the previous year when the month of March is closed. In the balancing menu item of a selected employee, this automatically deleted remaining leave is displayed.
The deletion of unused remaining leave only works if a previous year exists.
Example: If this module is introduced on 01.01.2023, then ZEP cannot determine the remaining leave from the previous year; the automatic deduction will only work starting from the following year, 2024.
Always [Number] months after the end of the leave year
This variant is particularly intended for use when the Austrian variant—where each employee has their own leave year starting from their entry date—is set. However, it also works when the leave year equals the calendar year and is useful if leave is not intended to expire in the following year but only later.
Expiry only ever occurs during the monthly closing of the relevant month set here.
If the month has not yet been closed, no expiry is visible.
If the setting is changed retrospectively, nothing changes for months that have already been closed.
Supplements
List supplements for holidays and special times as time surcharges and add to the overtime account
If you do not place a checkmark, supplements entered under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Holidays will be shown in the end-of-month report. They will not be converted into time supplements.
With a checkmark set:
All supplements entered under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Holidays become time supplements.
You can assign a time supplement (in %) for each entry under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Special Times.
You can define a special time for holidays under Administration > Overtime & Absences > Special Times.
If you have already assigned a supplement for a holiday (e.g., 50%) and define a special time for holidays (e.g., 100%), then the two time supplements are added together (=150).
In an employee's end-of-month report, a time supplement column is displayed in the monthly overview for public holidays and each special time, along with an additional column for the sum of the supplements.
In the end-of-month report, the hourly supplements column is additionally displayed in the annual overview table.
In the working times overview report, the hourly supplements are displayed in an additional column.
In all reports featuring internal costs, the time supplements are calculated using the employee's internal hourly rate (Project status earnings, Overall status earnings, and Internal costs).
The setting is a global default and can be deactivated for each employee.
Time supplements are calculated starting from the date of the "Introduction of the overtime, absences and leave module" or the last executed monthly closing.