PTO Accruals: New Flamingo Feature Update

We’re delighted to roll out the much-awaited PTO accruals feature in Flamingo.

This gives you two options for your team’s leave policy. You can use the existing, lump-sum method (where team members get their full yearly leave allowance given to them at the start of the year), or you can set it to accrue over time.

This gives you a lot more flexibility with how you use Flamingo, making us the best choice for a wider range of organizations.

Read on to learn how the new feature works, and what else is new in this update.

How Do Accruals Work?

Accruals can now be set up for all types of leave.

When accruals are enabled, the total yearly allowance will be divided by the accrual frequency you specify, with team members continuously earning leave over the year instead of receiving it all at once from the start of the year.

For example, if you allow 14 days of vacation per year, you can either give team members access to this all at once, or let them earn more leave as the year goes on (ultimately adding up to 14 days by the end of the year).

Accrual periods can be set to weekly, biweekly, monthly and quarterly.
Some of our users were doing this manually, calculating and adjusting leave every month. In this regard, our automatic accruals save so much time and effort.

How to Enable Accruals

You can enable accruals when editing a team’s leave policy, either when you first set up the team, or by going into your team settings and editing the leave policy.
From the leave policy screen, select the leave type you want and hit the Accruals toggle.

Customize the following settings for your accruals:

* Total yearly leave allowance (the total number of leave days the team member will get each year).

* Accrual frequency (how often leave will accrue).

* Accrual date (leave accrues at the beginning of each period or the end of each period – e.g. the 1st of the month or the 31st).

Flamingo will automatically calculate and display how many days will be earned per accrual period, based on the total leave allowance and accrual frequency.

When you’re happy, click Save, and your leave policy will be enabled.
Click here to read more about how accruals work in Flamingo.

Switching to Accruals

Once accruals are enabled, Flamingo will automatically recalculate the user’s leave balance to fit the newly updated leave policy, and how far through the year you are.

Leave Adjustments

If you need to adjust your team members’ leave balances, you can do this now with another new feature: leave adjustments.

This is a one-off change to a person’s current leave balance. You don’t change their yearly allowance or their accrual rate, you’ll just add or subtract days to their current outstanding amount.

This is a great way to add additional days off for a team member as a bonus, as compensation for overtime, or for any edge cases where you need a different balance to what has been calculated.
To adjust a user’s leave balance, go to their profile in the web app, and hit the Overrides tab.

Next to the balance you want to change, hit the word Adjust, and enter the new leave balance.

Check the details are correct, and hit Save. The new adjustment will go live, and regular accruals/end of year rollovers will happen as usual.

“Activity” Tab

We’ve got one more cool new feature to share with you.

In the web app, you can now view a log of all activity that’s taken place on a user’s account, such as leave requests, approved leaves, and leave balance adjustments.
You can view this on the user’s profile, under the new Activity tab.

Several of our larger users requested this feature, which gives you an easily accessible paper trail of all changes made, to help you know that everything is above board.

What’s Next?

We’re always working on adding more features to help you get more value out of Flamingo.

That’s one thing our users love – how dedicated we are to improving our software and making it fully compatible with your business.

Just check out this review we got on Capterra:

Your feedback is incredibly valuable for us as we keep shaping and improving our product.
If you have any comments, questions, or there’s anything you’d love to see us add next, get in touch via the chat bubble in the web app or through our contact form.