Time Off Policy Options
What kind of time off policy should I create?
Purpose: To help you understand each policy option and when to use each one for your employees.
Employee profile
Please note, if you hire a new employee, they will not automatically be assigned to any time off policies. Therefore, the time off categories will not be visible on the employee profile until you add them to their policies. For more information about assigning employees time off policies, click here.
To assign an accrual option to an employee for the first time, navigate to their Time Off tab and click Add Time Off Policy. To change the accrual option for a time off category for an employee, go to their Time Off tab and hover over the desired time off category. Click Change Policy then Move to Another Policy.
Policy options
The options that appear when you select Move to Another Policy depend on the type of policies that you set up in Time Off settings. There are three ways you can set up time off for an employee.
An accruing time off policy will automatically assign a balance to your employees based on the policy's accrual settings. You can determine the frequency that works best for you when setting up the policy in Time Off settings. Some common accrual frequencies are yearly, monthly, bi-weekly, or twice a month. Tenure Milestones allow you to increase an accrual amount without creating a separate policy.
For more information about setting up an accrual policy, click here.
This policy option is best used for employees who accrue time off through manual adjustments. No automatic accruals are associated with this type, but a current balance still shows to the employee. This option is an easy way to assign a balance for event-based categories such as parental leave or if your company front-loads time off allotments at the beginning of the year.
If you have a time off category that will always be manually adjusted, select the Manually Managed Policy option when creating the policy.
Once you assign an employee to a manually updated policy, the previous accrual policy will be removed from the employee's time off category. All previous accruals and adjustments will stay in the History table, and the current balance will remain the same. However, from that point forward, there will be no automatic accruals for the employee. Instead, adding time to the employee's balance will require a manual adjustment.
If you need to assign multiple employees to a manually updated policy, you can use the power edit tool.
If you are a company that front-loads annual PTO for your employees, you can do this using manual policy. Once you assign an employee to a manually updated policy, the previous accrual policy will be removed from the employee's time off category.
This allows you to add the desired annual amount to their policy and set the effective date to January 1st of each year.
In the example above, we've added 100 hours of PTO with an effective date of 01/01/2025 to Charlotte's account to give her 100 hours starting the first of the year.
If you need to assign all employees or multiple to the front-loaded PTO, you can do an import of time off data. Remember that a manually updated policy requires updates at each accrual period's beginning (or end). These updates must be made for each employee assigned to this policy individually or via a time off data import. We recommend using a yearly or anniversary-based accrual policy so our system can take care of all of the balance assignments for you.
A flexible time off policy allows you to track time off used YTD (year to date) instead of using a current balance. At BambooHR, we call it flexible time off but also refer to it as unlimited. This option is a great way to track time off categories like bereavement and unpaid time off, or you can use it if your company gives your employees unlimited time off.
If you create a new time off category that will need a flexible policy option, you will select the It's Flexible option when creating the time off policy.
Assigning a flexible policy to an employee who has already received a balance from a manual or accruing policy will clear the current balance from the employee profile. The transition to the new policy will be documented in the employee's time off history table.