Explanation: When an employee ends the year with a negative balance, the system does not automatically reset it to zero. This is because many companies will require someone to use their next accrual to "pay the debt."

How can I fix it?: If you want to “forgive the debt,” you can do a manual adjustment by adding the same amount that is negative to zero it out. We recommend dating the adjustment using a date from the end of last year so the history stays connected and your employees will understand why the adjustment is in place. You will also need to update your policy so it "forgives the debt" automatically going forward. To do this, go to Settings > Time Off > and select the policy you need to edit. Click Edit Schedule and under the Carryover Date section, click the box next to "Reset negative balances to 0 hours on carryover date". Don't forget to click Save!

What should I do next?: You can also use the Time Off Balances report for the end of the period to see how many employees ended in the negative. You can then do an import if there are multiple. Use the Calculate Balance option in the employee profile to check and make sure accruals will happen as planned.

Explanation: When an employee transitions from one milestone to the next, the system has two ways of calculating a transition. If the policy is set to Right when they become eligible (in the Accrual Options section), the employee will receive a prorated accrual (calculated at their current milestone) on the first date of the period. On their anniversary, they will receive a second accrual that is a prorated amount based on the new milestone, and then they will get the full accrual at the start of the next period.

How can I fix it?: The other option for a transition is if the policy is set to At the end of the accrual period. This setting means an employee will receive the full accrual at their current milestone at the beginning of the period before their anniversary date. At the end of that accrual period, the employee will move to the new milestone, and they’ll receive the full accrual for the new milestone.

BambooHR has the transition based on the employee's anniversary date. If you want all of the employees to transition annually based on the calendar, we recommend you create a policy for each milestone and assign them, as needed, at the beginning of each year.

What should I do next?: 1. Edit your existing time off policy following the steps from Some Fine-tuning down. 2. Refresh your employees' accruals to reflect the changes in the policy. You need to complete this step if you want to update accruals that have already taken place.

Alternatively, you can manually update your employee’s balances to reflect the needed balance without updating the policy. A Full Admin user can do this through an import for multiple employees at once.

Explanation: Carryover limits are determined in policy settings. By creating a new policy, or editing an existing one, you can choose the maximum amount of time that can be carried over and when it expires.

How can I fix it?: Navigate to your policy settings and determine your overtime limits and expiration.

What should I do next?: If you are editing many employees, refresh one employee and check to make sure they are correct. Then verify that this didn’t happen to others by using reports.

Alternatively, if you’d like to start from scratch, you can create a new policy and assign it to your employees.

Explanation: It is sometimes common for an HR department to either import requests from a previous month or approve requests after the first of the year. When this happens, if the carryover has already removed an amount, BambooHR will deduct the newly imported/approved requests from the remaining balance. The system will not automatically recalculate the carryover.

How can I fix it?: To update the carryover, you can refresh the balance from the first of the year.

What should I do next?: Check reports or the company inbox for other requests or negative balances. Update several employees' balances at once using the balance adjustment import. Refresh the accruals using the first of the year.

Explanation: This commonly happens with new time off categories and policies. This is also common for people who have recently changed access levels. The employee simply needs to have access given to the specific time off category.

How can I fix it?: The best way to fix this is to edit the access level in Access Level Settings. Watch this video to learn how to do this.

What should I do next?: Preview as the user to make sure they are seeing everything they need to see.

Explanation: There are a couple of things that could be happening here. 

1. The user has Edit and Manage Time Off access in their custom access level. With this combination, they will receive time off requests (for the employees they have access to and the time off categories filtered). They will be able to approve or deny as if they were in the workflow and supersede all.
   • How can I fix it?: Edit the access level so they either have only Edit access or Manage Time Off access under access options. They can always have View access if needed in the Time Off tab. 
2. The employee requesting time off does not have a manager or the next person in the workflow is inactive. These requests will go straight to the Account Owner.
   • How can I fix it?: You can only edit this in the employee's profile. By updating the Reports To section in the employee's Job Information table, you will prevent future requests from going to the Account Owner. This will not reroute existing requests. The Account Owner must approve/deny these requests, or the employees can edit their requests. 
3. The user is involved in an email alert for pending time off requests. This alert gets triggered if any people in the workflow have not approved the request, even if the recipient has already approved their part.
   • How can I fix it?: You can update/delete the email alerts for pending requests in Settings.

What should I do next?: As an admin, check the company inbox to make sure there are no pending or stuck requests.

Explanation: If you delete a time off policy, here's what will happen:

• Any employees assigned to that policy will no longer have the policy assigned, which means that the time off category will no longer show on the profiles of those who were assigned to the policy.
• Within the employee's time off history, instead of saying "The employee's [time off category] was set to [name of policy]," the history line will say, "The [time off category] was set to a new policy." In other words, the policy name will not show up in the time off history.
• All accruals and time off requests will remain within the history so that the historical record remains correct.
• If you delete a time off category (the tile on the employee's Time Off tab), it will also remove all of the history under that time off category. If you need to keep that history, we generally recommend deactivating the time off category, rather than deleting it.

How can I fix it?: There is no way to retrieve a deleted policy and the associated information.

What should I do next?: 

1. Export time off reports to preserve time off data outside of BambooHR.
2. Approve/deny any pending request from the inbox.
3. Create a new time off policy.
4. Assign the new policy to users.

Explanation: Whether you are viewing the request in your email, the Inbox, or the mobile app, as the approver, you’ll see who else is out during the dates of the request. This area is intentionally designed to show only employees who report to the same manager.

What to do next: If you need to see if others (e.g. same department, division, etc.) are out of the office, the Who’s Out Calendar on the Home tab will be a great feature to review. Don’t forget to update your filters (in the top right-hand corner) to show all the employees you need to see.

Explanation: To avoid the approval process, Admins can use the Record Time Off option on their profile. This will automatically approve the request.

If an Admin does need their time off to be approved, they can submit the request through the mobile app or on the Home tab. It will then need to be approved by the designated approvers.