WAP Help and User Guide – Holidays Module v18

1. Holiday Enable Configuration

For the Holiday module to be available the enable module must have Holidays Module ticked.  Once this is configured, Holiday options will then be visible within the System Settings.

Each year WAP will require a new enable string to continue working.  When a new one has been issued, select System Settings – Misc – Licencing – Apply new licence – Browse and Upload.

2. Holiday Settings

Before the holiday request module is used, a number of initial settings need to be configured.  These settings are found in WAP System Settings – Holiday tab.

2.1. System Settings - General

Default holiday period start date:  set as per the organisation’s holiday period start date; the default will be configured as January 1^st.  Each user can have a different holiday start date if required, this is set on their user profile (User Setup – Users – Holidays); i.e. if their holiday year starts on a different date.

Default holiday entitlement for users (hours):  enter the standard number of holiday entitlement in hours, again, this can be overridden per user on their user profile.  The default entitlement will be the number of working hours in a day multiplied by the default holiday days; e.g. 7.5 x 28 to give 210 as the default.

Do not allow submission of holiday requests if there is a conflict with already booked holiday of a specified user:  if enabled, conflicting users will not be able to submit holiday for the same date(s).  If not configured, conflicting users can submit holiday requests for the same date(s) and the requesting user and approver will be notified of the conflict at the point of submitting the request and when approving the request.

Allow entry of historic holiday requests:  this allows pre-dated holiday requests, within the same holiday entitlement year – a user cannot claim holiday in a date if they do not have entitlement that covers that year.  This may be required if the Holiday module is implemented part way through the holiday year and already taken holiday needs to be entered onto the system.

Do not allow submission of holiday requests if the user has not accrued enough holiday:  accrued entitlement will be calculated based either on the holiday year start date, or the employee’s start date (entered on their user profile), if this date is after the holiday year start date.  If this setting is ticked, the user cannot submit a holiday request if it is greater than their accrued holiday.

Allow booking single hours:  the system will by default allow users to book holiday in days or half day amount; enabling this setting will allow single hours on a day to be booked.

Who to send meeting requests to on final approval:  this setting will automatically email meeting requests to add approved holiday to relevant users’ Outlook calendars.  N.B. the meeting invite will be sent to the email address linked to the user on their WAP profile, will be sent from the system email address (as configured in System Settings – Email) and will contain details of the holiday request in the body of the email.  On final approval of a holiday request, a meeting invite can be sent to different users depending on configuration:

• None – no meeting invites are sent.
• Requestor – a meeting invite is sent to the user who submitted the holiday request.
• Default Business Unit – if the user who submitted the holiday request has a default business unit allocated, the meeting invite is sent to all users who are part of that business unit.
• All Business Units – the meeting invite will be sent to all users of all business units the user who submitted the holiday request belongs to.
• All Users – the meeting invite will be sent to all active WAP users.

Automatically set users out of office when holiday starts:  if enabled, when a user enters a holiday request they can select an alternate user to cover their holiday period.  When the holiday starts, the requesting user’s WAP out of office is automatically switched on and any documents requiring approval will also be sent to the chosen alternate user.

Automatically set users out of office when holiday ends:  if enabled, when a user enters a holiday request they can select an alternate user to cover their holiday period.  When the holiday has ended, the requesting user’s WAP out of office is automatically switched off.

2.2. System Settings - Non-Working Days

WAP is installed with the default country’s bank holidays as standard and are referred to as Non-Working days which will not be deducted from a user’s annual entitlement.  At install, the default country is England but this can be changed if required (System Setup – Countries and Cities).  Additional non-working days can be added as required; either for the whole year by selecting the year and clicking ‘Add bank holidays to selected country for year (GB only)’ or by selecting the country, entering a description, date and clicking ‘Add Non-Working Day’.

Other Options:  Reprocess Timesheets will remove current non-working days already posted to timesheets and re-post per dates on the screen and will need to be run if new days are added.

2.3. System Settings - Mandatory Holidays

This function enforces mandatory holiday which will be taken from the user’s entitlement.  These mandatory holidays can be added as per the organisation’s requirements; i.e. Christmas Shutdown.  If additional mandatory dates are added, the Reprocess Timesheets option will need to be run again to update users’ timesheets.

2.4. Work Patterns

Work patterns are common to the Timesheets and Holiday modules and are used to calculate the number of working hours on a holiday request.  A holiday work pattern needs to be set up to reflect the contracted/standard working hours and therefore multiple holiday work patterns may need to be created to accommodate all users, particularly part time users.  A holiday work pattern is then assigned to each user on their user profile (User Profile – Holidays tab).

To create or edit a work pattern, go to System Setup – Work Patterns & Rates.

Name the work pattern accordingly and select Holiday from the pattern type drop down.  The Work Pattern Rule option can be ignored as this is only relevant for Timesheet work patterns.  For each normal working day, select the correct description, add the contracted hours using the start and end time options, pay rate and shift type.  Once a day has been configured it can be copied to other days using the Copy function at the bottom of the screen.  It is important to make sure the morning and afternoon shifts contain the same number of hours so there is no difference in entitlement deducted if a user was to take a morning or afternoon shift off.

The below holiday work pattern is a default that can be edited as required, but has initially been created for users that work 7.5 hour days across 5 days in the week.

The corresponding default timesheet work pattern is shown below.  This must match the holiday work pattern’s start and end times and is then used to put the approved holiday request on the user’s timesheet (if the Timesheets module is being used in conjunction with the Holidays module).  The timesheet work pattern is then assigned to each user on their user profile (User Profile – Timesheets tab).

2.5. User Type Settings

To allocate relevant user type permissions, go to User Setup – User Types.

Submit Holiday Requests:  the ability for a user to submit a holiday request.

Approve Holiday Requests:  the ability for a user to approve a holiday request.

Delete Holiday Request:  the ability for a user to delete a holiday request.  N.B. once a holiday request has been fully approved, it cannot be deleted but instead needs to be cancelled and submitted as a cancellation request.

Reset Completed Holiday:  this setting allows users to reset a completed holiday request so it can be cancelled and the holiday added back onto the user’s entitlement; i.e. to cover the situation where a user has a holiday booked but ends up working on this day and wishes to cancel a holiday that has already been flagged as taken.

View Department Holiday Requests:  the ability to view holiday requests submitted by other users in the same business unit.

View All Holiday Requests:  the ability to view all holiday requests in the system for all active WAP users.

View Holiday Reports:  the ability to access reports showing entitlement and booked holiday.  Depending on permissions on the General tab, the user will either be able to see requests for themselves, their business unit users, their delegates or all users.

Amend User Holiday Rules:  the ability to change rules for how users within the organisation conflict with other users’ holiday requests.  This permission is usually only given to the WAP Superusers.

Perform Holiday Month End:  this gives the user the ability to perform holiday month end which will create new entitlement for coming years, identify hours to carry forward or hours to pay.  This permission should only be given to WAP Superusers.

Add Starting Holiday lines for users:  this will give the user the permission to access the Starting Holiday tool; generally, this is only given to WAP Superusers.  This tool can be used to adjust a user’s holiday entitlement is a user is starting part way through the year.

Configure Work Patterns:  the ability to create and assign work patterns; this is usually just a WAP Superuser permission.

2.6. User Profile Settings

Each user needs to be setup with correct holiday entitlement and linked to the correct work pattern.  This is done on their WAP User profile – Holidays tab.  Click Add or Edit for the relevant holiday period to enter or amend holiday entitlement figures.  Holiday entitlement is always entered and booked in hours, but will be converted to days to be user-friendly (the estimated days figure uses the holiday work pattern to get the average hours in a working day to then estimate the days).

If adding a user part way through the holiday year, enter the full entitlement correctly and either submit any taken holiday requests for approval so the entitlement figure will be adjusted once the holiday request is approved, or use the Starting Holiday tool.

Entitlement (h):  when a holiday period is added to the user the default holiday entitlement figure will be automatically entered, but this can be overridden if required.  Any configured mandatory days will be deducted from this amount but non-working days will not so these should not be included in the entitlement figure.

Period Start and Period End:  the default holiday start and end dates will also be automatically pulled through but these can be overridden if needed.

Brought Forward (h):  if a user is carrying forward any entitlement from a previous holiday period, this can be entered in the ‘Brought Forward’ hours.

Notes:  text can be entered here to explain any changes that have been made.  These notes will not be visible to the end user; they are for reference only.

N.B. make sure to click ‘Update’ before saving the user’s profile to make sure any changes are saved.

Click the padlock icon to lock or unlock a holiday period to prevent or allow holiday requests to be submitted.

Entitlement (h):  this is the total number of hours’ holiday entitlement the user has been given.

Accrued (h):  this figure is calculated from ‘months until now’ (either from the start of the holiday year or from the employee’s start date, depending on which is the most recent date), multiplied by ‘monthly accrual’ (the entitlement hours divided by months – usually 12 as this is the number of months in a holiday period).

Remaining Accrued (h):  this figure is calculated from ‘accrued hours’ minus ‘taken hours’, ‘booked hours’ and ‘mandatory hours’.

Est Accrued (d):  the holiday work pattern is used to get the average hours in a working day to estimate the accrued hours figure into an estimated days figure.

Remaining Est Accrued (d):  the holiday work pattern is used to get the average hours in a working day to estimate the remaining accrued hours figure into an estimated days figure.

Remaining (h):  this figure is calculated from ‘entitlement hours’ plus ‘brought forward hours’ minus ‘taken hours’, ‘booked hours’ and ‘mandatory hours’.

Est Entitlement (d):  the holiday work pattern is used to get the average hours in a working day to estimate the entitlement hours figure into an estimated days figure.

Est Remaining (d):  this figure is an estimate from the ‘estimated entitlement in days’ minus ‘taken days’, ‘booked days’ and ‘mandatory days’.  The holiday work pattern is used to get the average hours in a working day.

2.7. Approval Route Setup

Holiday request approval routes can only be configured based on requesting user; most commonly approval is to a user’s line manager but additional steps can be added in if required; i.e. to a HR manager.  Configure approval routes in the standard way; either using the Approval Route wizard, editing a single route or using the Approval Route Import CSV.

https://www.sicon.co.uk/user-guide/wap-approval-routes/#3

2.8. User Setup – Holidays – Starting Holiday

The starting holiday tool can be used to adjust a user’s holiday entitlement if they are starting with the organisation part way through the year.  The user would have been allocated a full yearly entitlement on their user profile and then this tool can deduct the hours the user has already taken in holiday up to the current date.

Once a user has been selected, their entitlement will be displayed.  To add a holiday adjustment line, click ‘Add new starting holiday’.

Enter a start and end date and time; these must be in the past but within the current holiday year.  These dates are for description only to show to the user on their entitlement page.  Ensure the total hours are correct for the holiday the user has taken; this will be the working hours in a day multiplied by the total number of days they have taken.  In the above example the user works 7.5 hours a day and has taken 10 days.  If required, holiday requests could be added to a timesheet line, however in most instances of using this functionality, this would not be required.  A default description is added per holiday adjustment line, but this can be edited if needed.  Once the hours are correct, save the adjustment line.

Once this line has been added, the user will be able to see this line under their current requests and it will be highlighted as an adjustment line.

2.9. User Setup – Holidays – Holiday Rules

WAP Holidays module can ensure that specified users cannot request holiday when another user has already booked the day off, or just flag to approvers that there is a conflict between users.

Select the user account from the Configure Rules for drop down box and select any number of users that will conflict with the user’s holiday (hold the Ctrl key while selecting users to multi select).  If any users in the selected users list already have the day(s) booked off, then the first user and the approver will either be warned or the user will not be able to submit the request (depending on system configuration).

Also create/remove reversed rules:  if this option is selected, when a rule is created for User A to be warned when User B is away, then the opposite rule will be created at the same time.  The rules are not linked and can be edited or deleted separately at any time.

2.10. User Setup - Holidays - Bank Holiday Tool

This tool can be used to add or remove bank holidays from a user; for example, if a user works over a bank holiday, they should not have a line on their timesheets for this holiday.  Once a user has bank holidays removed from them, if they were to submit a holiday request over a previously existing bank holiday, it would remove a full day of entitlement.

Select the user(s) to add or remove dates from.

Choose the bank holiday dates to add or remove from the user(s); the years can be filtered if required or multiple dates selected at a time.

Once all the correct dates have been chosen, confirm whether they are to be added or removed from the user.  Note; if adding a bank holiday, this will remove any previous entries from the user’s timesheet and add again with the current default project and work pattern.

Choose whether to remove bank holiday timesheet lines, login lines and whether to delete the timesheet if there are no other entries remaining.

Complete the wizard following review of the summary.

2.11. User Setup – Holidays – Holiday Entitlement Year End

This procedure is a quick way to create next year’s entitlement for many users; users might not be on the same holiday period if the user has started at different times in the year.  This functionality allows the Superuser the ability to review all users’ holiday entitlement and create future years’ entitlement for many users at once.

2.12. Month End Procedures

This should be a Superuser permission found under the Holidays menu on the left of the screen; Month End.  This functionality can be run on a monthly basis to see which users’ holiday year is going to finish in the selected month (when users have different start/end holiday months).  It is also possible to create the next year’s entitlement with options for any remaining holiday; to either write off any remaining, to pay (this is still a manual process to pay externally of WAP; this is just a record in WAP) or to carry over to the new year and increate the user’s entitlement through the brought forward hours.

3. New Holiday Request

Once the system, user and approval configuration has been configured, the user will be able to click New Holiday Request from the Holidays side menu.

A description can be entered for the request but it is also possible to enter a description at line level if needed.  Any description entered will be visible to other users in WAP who have permission to view either business unit or all holiday requests.  The Urgent flag can be ticked to send the request to approvers as soon as the holiday line is submitted, outside of the standard email thread times.

3.1. Adding New Date

To add a new holiday line to the request, click Add New Holiday.

Enter the start and end dates and times.  The line can be given a description if required and depending on the organisation’s policies, can either be taken from the user’s holiday entitlement or as unpaid leave.  Once the holiday request has been entered, click to save.  If the organisation allows, the user may also be able to book single hours on a day.  Approvers can select an alternate user to approve any documents sent to themselves for the duration of this annual leave request.

If holiday rules have been configured and there is a conflict when a user submits a holiday request, the following message will appear:

One the date has been entered, click Save to go back to the holiday request.

To save the request to either make any changes or add more information later, click the Save button.  This will store the request without sending it for approval.  To submit the request for approval, click Save and Submit.  To close the screen without making any further changes, click the Close button.  If more dates need to be added, these will need to be done as a new request.

WAP Help and User Guide – HR Module

3.2. Entitlement Tab

These tabs will show to the user their current holiday period with their entitlement figures broken down to show their submitted, taken, booked, remaining and mandatory days.  The user can toggle between entitlement years, if future years have been given to the user, and whether to show entitlement as days or as hours.  Make sure to click the Update button if changing how entitlement should show.

3.3. Entitlement – Accrual Sub Tab

This tab will show entitlement the user has accrued (either from the start of the holiday period or from the user’s start date) compared to what the user has taken.  Again, these figures can be shown in either hours or days and future years’ allowances if applicable.

3.4. Entitlement – Requests Sub Tab

This tab will show to the user their requests for the current holiday year, with any cancelled or conflicting holiday requests showing.

3.5. Calendar Tab

Holiday dates already booked or submitted by the user can be seen in the calendar.  Depending on user type permissions, the user will be able to see their requests, their business unit requests or all users’ holiday requests.  Holiday requests on the calendar are colour coded to show the difference between un-submitted, submitted, approved and taken requests.  Bank holiday and mandatory days will also show on the calendar.

3.6. Approval History Tab

Once the holiday request has been submitted, the Approval History tab will get populated with approvers, dates and times.

4. Approve Holiday Requests

To get to the approval page, either click on the approval links on the user’s WAP homepage, or select Approve Holiday Requests from the side menu on the left side of the page.

To open a request to see line details, click on the arrow on the left side of the line.

Start and End Time:  these will show the start and end time and dates of the user’s holiday request.

Total Hours:  based on the holiday pattern linked to the user this will show the total hours on the holiday request – hovering over the total hours will convert the total to days.  Any non-working days (i.e. weekends) will show in the hover over too.

Description:  if the user had entered a description on the line, this would show here.

Reject Reason:  this will only be populated if the holiday request was rejected by an approver.

Unpaid:  if when the user put on their holiday request, the request was taken selected as an unpaid request, this box would be ticked and will not be taken from the user’s annual entitlement.

Out of Office:  if the approver has this request because they have been selected as another user’s out of office alternate user, this box will be ticked.

Conflicts/Conflicts With:  this will indicate that this holiday request conflicts with another user and will show the relevant user(s).

Over Entitlement:  this will be ticked if the number of days requested will take the user over their annual entitlement.

Cancelled Request:  this will be ticked if the request is a cancellation request; the line will also have a strikethrough to indicate it is a cancellation request.

Approve/Reject:  the approver can approve or reject the request as applicable; if the request is rejected a reason for the rejection must be entered.

View Request Details:  this will take the approver through to the original holiday request page.

4.1. Approve Page - Approval History

This tab will show detailed information on the approval history of the request; when it was submitted and approved by whom.

4.2. Approve Page - Approver Messages

This tab will show a breakdown of the holiday request detailing any conflicts, descriptions, entitlement hours etc.

4.3. Approve Page – Entitlement Tab

This tab will show to the approver details on the user’s entitlement figures; how many days’ entitlement they have versus what has been submitted, booked, taken etc.

4.4. Approve Holiday Requests – Calendar

The Calendar tab can be used by the approver to view other holiday requests that have been submitted or approved; the options at the top will be determined by the user type permissions; whether they can view business unit or all users’ requests.

5. Existing Holiday Requests

A user can view their requests by clicking the Existing Holiday Requests button from the Holidays side menu.  Using the Quick Links, the user is either able to view their requests or requests they have approved (if they are an approver).  Holiday requests will be sorted by status and show in the relevant tabs.

The Calendar tab shows the user’s requests and if the user has relevant permissions, those submitted by other users in their Business Unit or all users.

5.1. Cancelling a Holiday Request

Once a holiday request has been approved, it cannot be deleted.  A user must submit a cancellation request if they no longer wish to take this holiday.  This allows the approver to either approve the cancellation request which will result in the time being added back onto the user’s entitlement, or if necessary, reject the cancellation request which will mean the user will have to take the time off.

To cancel an approved request, the user will need to find their original approved request, click to edit and then select Cancel on the line.  A prompt will appear to the user reminding them that this request will need to be submitted before the hours are added back onto the user’s entitlement.  The request will need to be saved and submitted once the line has been cancelled.

Once the cancellation request has been submitted, the request will be sent down the preconfigured approval route.  The approver is aware that this is a cancellation request as the lines are crossed through and the request has been marked as a Cancellation request.  Only once the cancellation line has been fully approved is the entitlement added back to the user.

This holiday request will show to the user in the Completed tab with zero hours and a Cancelled status.

Once a holiday request has been cancelled, if there were any conflicting users they will be sent an email notifying them of the original user’s cancellation.

5.2. Resetting a Completed Holiday Request

If a taken holiday needs to be withdrawn once it has passed; for example, if a user has booked a day off but was then called in and had to work that day, the original holiday request cannot be cancelled as it will have moved to a Completed status.  In this instance, the user will need to view the completed holiday request and click to remove the line.  Once this has been done, the taken hours will be deducted from the user’s entitlement and added back onto the remaining hours.  If a timesheet line has been entered with this holiday request, the line will be removed and the timesheet will need to be resubmitted.

The ability to reset a completed holiday request is a user type permission.

6. Part Time Users

If an employee is a part-time worker, it is possible to flag them as such on their user profile; this will mean that their entitlement will show in hours rather than days, and if the organisation allows for booking in single hours, this will be defaulted when the user goes to submit a holiday request.

6.1. Part Time Users' Work Patterns

Similar to full time users, a part time user requires a holiday and timesheet work pattern created; it may be that many work patterns need creating to cover all variations of part time users’ working hours.  Holiday work patterns should average the user’s weekly working hours across their working days to ensure the same hourly entitlement is deducted regardless of the holiday day requested.   The AM and PM shifts must contain the same number of hours so as not to take more entitlement from either a morning or afternoon holiday request.  If a part-time user doesn’t work a morning or afternoon shift, this will need to be added in as a non-working shift to ensure the correct entitlement is deducted.

In the below example a holiday work pattern has been created for a user who works two 7.5 hour shifts on Wednesday and Thursday and a 5.5 hour shift on Friday (so the average entitlement to deduct would be 6.83 hours across Wednesday to Friday – the user is working 20.5 hours across three days).  N.B. if Timesheets are also being used, Holiday AM shift start time must match the corresponding Timesheet AM shift start time, and the Holiday PM shift end time must match the corresponding Timesheet PM shift end time.  Below the Holiday work pattern is the corresponding Timesheet work pattern for reference.

For assistance with setup of Holiday work patterns, please contact your Sage BP or Sicon Project Admin consultant.

Part Time user’s holiday work pattern:

Part Time user’s timesheet work pattern:

6.2. Part Time Users' Holiday Entitlement

On the user’s profile, under the Holidays tab, select their Holiday work pattern to be the correct Part Time Work Pattern.  There is a Part Time calculator which can be used to estimate a user’s entitlement, based on the full time work pattern and full time entitlement.  This figure generated is only for reference and won’t automatically update the user’s entitlement.

NB: the user will need to be allocated entitlement for the current year before the calculation can take place.

The user’s entitlement hours will then need to be updated to make sure that they are not allocated a full time user’s yearly entitlement.

6.3. Part Time Users' Holiday Request

When a part time user puts on a holiday request, their entitlement will be automatically shown in hours (rather than days), although there is an option to convert to days if this is how the user would rather see their entitlement figures.

If the system allows for booking in single hours, when a part time user enters a new holiday request it will be defaulted for them to put on a request in single hours.  The user can switch to enter a holiday request in days or half days.

If a holiday request spans non-working days (in our part time user example they do not work Mondays or Tuesdays), this will be flagged to the approver that the request includes non-working days.  Once the holiday work pattern has been setup so any non-working days are configured correctly, the user’s holiday request will not deduct any holiday entitlement for these days.  The below request was added for Monday – Wednesday so should only deduct one day of entitlement.

7. Holiday Reports

There are three holiday reports available and as will all WAP reports, customisation is possible by dragging columns to the top header to group, or columns moved around or removed by using the Customise button.  These reports are cookie based so it is necessary to allow cookies from the website to retain any customisation.  N.B. specific layouts may be lost if the WAP system is upgraded or the internet browser history is cleared.  All reports can be exported to Excel for easier manipulation if required.

7.1. Holiday Entitlement

This report will show all users and the current status relating to their annual entitlement such as total hours taken, booked, mandatory hours etc.  As this report will list all users’ entitlement, it is recommended the ability to run holiday reports is only given to WAP Superusers.

7.2. Holiday Requests

This report will show users and their holiday requests within a specified time period and cancellation requests can be shown if required.  Depending on user type permissions, the report will data from just the user running the report, their delegates, their business unit members or all users in the system.

7.3. Detailed Holiday Requests

This report will show users’ requests in greater detail; it will include number of days booked, approval stages, any bank holidays in the request period etc.

8. Holiday Approval Stages

Holiday requests will appear in various stages and tabs depending on the approval status, dates etc.

8.1. Holiday Headers

New:  the holiday request has not yet been submitted.

Submitted:  the holiday request has been submitted for approval but not yet fully approved.

Approved:  the holiday request has been fully approved but the holiday date has not yet passed.

Rejected:  the holiday request has been rejected.

Completed:  the holiday request has either been taken or has been cancelled.

Failed:  the holiday request has failed during the approval process.  A user with the permission to clear errors would need to clear the error and repost.  A request may fail if trying to post time onto a timesheet and either the Holiday Default Project has not been set correctly, or the user’s holiday pattern has been changed since the original request was input.

8.2. Holiday Line Status

New Line:  the holiday line has not yet been submitted.

Waiting:  the holiday line is awaiting approval.

Authorised:  the holiday line has been approved.

Rejected:  the holiday line has been rejected.

No Authorisers:  there are no authorisers for the holiday line; check the approval route has been set correctly.

9. WAP Holidays Help and User Guide - Sicon v17

WAP Help and User Guide – Holidays Module v17

10. New Features & Important Information

10.1. Sicon v21.1

10.2. Sicon v21

10.3. Sicon v20.1

10.4. Sicon v20

10.5. Sicon v19.1

10.6. Sicon v19

10.7. Sicon v18