Time banks: units

Introduction

Each time bank (1-9) can be denominated in one of the following:

Hours
Days
Dollars
Hours and dollars
Days and dollars

Time banks that use dual units are more complicated to manage, but allow many more possibilities.

Regardless of the unit selected for a bank, it will apply to the bank for all employees and plans concerned. For example, if you want to have a vacation bank in hours for a certain category of employees and one in days for another, you can use two different banks: 1. vacation hours and 2. vacation days. The two are of the same type, i.e. both are vacation banks.

Later on, if you need to change the unit for a given bank, Umana staff will be pleased to do it for you.

It is not a simple process, and involves changes to your history and rules, as well as some other modifications. The change is fraught with pitfalls. Choose the unit you wish to use to create banks carefully.

Days versus hours

The unit can be in days or hours, for banks in which the deposits and withdrawals are denominated in hours.

The most important differences between the day and hour units are with respect to

displaying an employee's time bank,
how the bank works when an employee's schedule changes.

The other differences are less significant, since it is very easy to convert days into hours, or vice versa, in order to include them in printed reports or pay stubs.

In general

Time banks in hours are more accurate and useful for hourly employees and those on rotating shifts, particularly those who do not work the same number of hours each day.

An employee who works 40 hours/week and who has 40 hours (equivalent to 5 days) accrued in his/her time bank will still have 40 hours in it, even if he/she switches from a 40- to a 35-hour week. This will then be equivalent to 5.71 days.
Time banks in days are mainly useful for employees who may go from an 8- to a 7-hour-a-day schedule, and who must keep a constant number of days in their time banks.

Example

An employee who works 40 hours/week and who has 5 days (equivalent to 40 hours) in his/her bank will always have 5 days in it, even after switching from a 40- to a 35-hour schedule. This will then be equivalent to 35 hours.

Through these examples, you can see the impact of entering data in days or in hours.

Converting between days and hours

For the vacation banks, you will probably have to convert hours into days or days into hours. This is because vacation entitlement deposits are usually in days (2 weeks = 10 days, 3 weeks = 15 days, etc.) and withdrawals are in hours (via transactions in the Attendance detail).

If a time bank is in days, Umana automatically converts deposit and withdrawal transactions entered in hours in the Attendance detail into days. To do this, the number of hours of the transaction is divided by the average number of full-time equivalent (FTE) hours for the employee—even if this employee is part time.

For entitlement calculations, your formula should produce a number in the appropriate unit. For example, if your bank is in hours and you want to give 2 weeks (or 10 days) of vacation to your full-time employees, your entitlement calculation has to convert the 10 days into hours.

The HRSPDY() function will give you the average number of hours per day (FTE) to be multiplied by the number of days.

HRSPDY() function

The Time banks module uses the HRSPDY (PersId, effective-date, .t.) formula to calculate the number of hours per day (FTE). You must also use this function to calculate the entitlements for the time banks.

Examples

The HRSPDY() function works very well, but in a few non-standard circumstances, the results obtained may be a little surprising. Let's look at a few examples.

Joe works 40 hours/week, i.e. 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday. The HRSPDY() function divides the 40 hours/week by 5 days/week, which gives 8 hours/day. Excellent.
Sam also works 40 hours/week, but works 10 hours on Mondays and Tuesdays, and doesn't work on Fridays. The HRSPDY() function calculates 8 hours/day for him as well. It seems strange, but you will see that the result is correct.
- If the vacation bank is in hours and Sam is entitled to 2 weeks (10 days) of vacation at the beginning of the year, as is Joe, the system will have deposited 10 days X 8 hours/day = 80 hours in his vacation bank.
- If the vacation bank is in days, the system will have deposited 2 weeks (10 days) in his vacation bank at the start of the year. That's right! When Sam takes a Monday off, he is entitled to 10 hours, i.e. the equivalent of 1.25 days. If he also takes Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, he will have taken 4 X 1.25 days—a full week, as should be.
Rita works 7 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and 5 hours on Saturday. She also works 40 hours a week and is entitled to 2 weeks (40 hours) of vacation a year. Ideally, her bank will be in hours.
- When she takes Monday off, 7 hours are withdrawn from her bank; for Saturday, 5 hours are withdrawn. If she takes one week of vacation, 40 hours will be withdrawn.
- If the bank is in days, 7 hours are equivalent to seven eighths (0.875) of a day. Her 5 hours on Saturday count for five eighths (0.625) of a day. Add them up and you will get 5 days for one week.
In the case of Rita, you will have to customize the HRSPDY() function if you consider that a vacation day taken on Saturday is the same as one taken on Monday.
This is highly discouraged because you have no way of calculating the hours per day when you need to empty her bank – such as on termination.

Part-time employees

Take the case of Mary, who works part time 4 hours a day, from Monday to Friday. Her work week is therefore 20 hours. Let's assume she is entitled to 2 weeks of vacation a year. How should her time bank be managed?
- When the time bank is in hours, it's easy: she is entitled to 20 hours a week, 2 weeks of vacation a year, so 40 hours. After working part-time for a year, she is entitled to only half the vacation time of full-time employees.
  
  This reflects Canadian labour standards. If she becomes a full-time employee, she will still have 40 hours in her vacation bank, coming from her previous year of part-time work, but it will be equivalent to only a week of vacation.
  
  Umana manages all of this automatically in part. When entitlements are deposited for an employee in his/her vacation bank, regular entitlements (2 weeks = 10 days) are converted to 20 instead of 40 hours.
- The same logic applies when the time bank is in days. Mary's bank should contain 5 days after her entitlements are deposited, but this will be the equivalent of 5 days working full time. If she becomes a full-time employee, she will have only 5 days.
  
  You can see from this example that time banks in days should always be in full days. When Mary takes a vacation day, it is 4 hours. These 4 hours are converted into days and subtracted from her time bank. The system divides her 4 hours by HRSPDY() = 8; because Mary's full-time equivalent is 8 hours a day, the HRSPDY() function calculates 8. So 4 hours divided by 8 hours/day = 0.5 days. That's all well and good.
  
  But since things tend to get complicated, let's add another twist. Let's assume that Mary, in the previous example, decides to change her schedule to work 10 hours a day, 2 days a week only, Mondays and Tuesdays. Her hours/week will continue to equal 20, and as a result, her average number of hours per day will be 4. The 5-day balance of her bank stays the same. But if she takes a 10-hour vacation day, her balance will decrease by 10/8 (1.25) days. In 2 weeks of vacation, she will take 4 10-hour days, reducing her bank by 4 X 1.25 (5 days), which adds up to her 2 weeks of vacation entitlement. So everything is working well.

Umana manages part-time employees by adjusting their vacation entitlement to the percentage of full-time work. So a part-time employee will have 2 weeks of vacation, or 10 full-time equivalent (FTE) hours a day X 50%, which works out to 5 days. If the time bank is in hours, this will be multiplied by HRSPDY(), which is the number of hours a part-time employee works in 2 weeks.

Reports

You can also use HRSPDY(0, , .t.) as a multiplier or divisor in reports to print the hours, even if the bank is in days.
For example, if your vacation bank is in hours and you want to print the number of days used this year, use the following expression:
Timesum.TS_TAKEN / HRSPDY(0, , .t.).

Banks denominated in time and dollar units

Time banks that use dual units—time and dollars—are a little more complicated, but very useful, particularly for unionized companies, where accuracy is critical. There are especially useful for overtime banks.
When a bank is in time and dollars, these two units are assigned when deposits and withdrawals are made.

For example, if an employee works an hour of overtime at $15 (e.g. time-and-a-half at $10/hour), the Time unit will accrue by 1 hour and the Dollar unit will accrue by $15.
Later, the employee may deposit 1 hour at double time = $20 in his/her bank.
After a salary increase, the employee could deposit 1 hour of double time = $22 in his/her bank. The new balance will be 3 hours and $57.
The time banks plan lets you determine the rate at which the employee will be paid when he/she withdraws time from his/her bank.
In this case, the best scenario is to pay the employee the hourly rate equal to the average rate of each banked hour. In our example, the employee has 3 hours and $57 in his/her bank. As the average hourly rate is $19, he/she will be able to take up to 3 hours at $19 an hour.
Although overtime banks are the best example of banks that use dual units, you can still use this type of unit for any other time bank, even vacation banks.
This means that you have to tell the system how to calculate the entitlements for the two units, time and dollars.
The easiest option is to specify the entitlement in days and let the system use the current rate to calculate the equivalent in dollars.
You can also specify separate calculations for days and dollars.