This help guide will explain Tanda's leave autofill feature, including how to configure it and what each setting means.
What is leave autofill?
By default, Tanda defines a day of paid leave as 8 hours (this is configurable via Settings > Leave > Default leave behaviour). However, not all employees work a 'standard' 8-hour day, which is where leave autofill comes in handy.
Tanda's leave autofill setting ensures the correct number of leave hours are entered for each day when an employee applies for leave. That way, your leave hours are accurate whether it's for a full-time employee scheduled to work a 12-hour shift or a part-time employee scheduled to work 4 hours.
With leave autofill configured, employees only need to enter a start and end date for their leave request, and the correct number of hours per day will automatically populate. This setting can be especially useful for any staff member who works irregular hours (i.e. not always working an 8-hour day/38-hour week).
You can create a single autofill rule or multiple rules to cover multiple different scenarios. When using multiple rules, Tanda will skip to your next preference if your preferred option isn't available.
IMPORTANT: Please note that using leave autofill is entirely optional, though it can be particularly beneficial for employees who work irregular hours. If you don't configure leave autofill, Tanda will simply apply the default leave length in your account settings to all leave applications. You can still manually edit this figure when creating a leave request if it is inaccurate.
What do the leave autofill options mean?
You can configure leave requests to autofill from any combination of the below options:
Regular hours of work: If you select this option, the leave request will be autofilled using the employee's regular hours of work (also known as 'contracted hours'.) You can configure or edit an employee's regular hours of work via the pay conditions tab of their staff profile. For example:
Published roster: If you select this option, the leave request will be autofilled using the employee's published rostered hours. For example, if an employee is rostered to work a 6-hour shift on the day they are applying for leave, their leave request will be autofilled with 6 hours.
Unpublished roster: If you select this option, the leave request will be autofilled using the employee's scheduled hours from your unpublished rosters, if you have any. Typically, this is used as a backup option in case there are no published rosters.
From a recent pattern of approved shifts: This option reviews the 5 weeks before the requested leave date. If the employee worked that day 3+ times in the past 5 weeks, it will be treated as a paid day of leave. From here, it will calculate the average hours worked on that day over the last 5 weeks and autofill that as the number of paid leave hours. This can be especially beneficial for full-time employees who work irregular hours.
How does leave autofill work?
Let's say you have a part-time staff member with the following regular hours of work configured in their Staff Profile (via the Pay Conditions tab):
Mon: N/A
Tue: 1p-5p
Wed: N/A
Thu: 5p-10p
Fri: 2p-10p
Sat: 1p-6p
Sun: 12p-7p
If you had not configured leave autofill, and the employee applied for leave from Tuesday to Friday, the system would treat this as 32 hours of paid leave by default (8 hours per day x 4 days).
However, we know this is incorrect: they work 4 hours on Tuesday, don't work at all on Wednesday, work 5 hours on Thursday, and work 8 hours on Friday. As such, they should only be entitled to 17 hours of paid leave (4 hours + 5 hours + 8 hours). Without leave autofill, you would have to manually update the request with the correct hours, or even risk the error slipping through and the request being incorrect.
Configuring your leave autofill settings to first look for an employee's 'regular hours of work' solves this issue and outputs the correct result. Instead of defaulting to 8 hours of leave per day, the system will check the employee's regular hours and realise they are scheduled to work 17 hours in that period, making them entitled to 17 hours of leave.
Using multiple autofill options
You can set up leave autofill as a hierarchy so that if one option doesn't exist, the system will search for the next option. For example, let's say your leave autofill is set up as Regular hours of work -> Published roster -> Unpublished roster (a common configuration), as in the image below.
In this configuration, the system would first look for an employee's regular hours of work. If none exist, it will then look for published rostered hours for that employee. If none of those exist either, it will look for an employee's unpublished rostered hours.
If none of the above options exist, leave requests will be filled using the Default Leave Length of 8 hours per day (or whatever figure you have updated this to via Settings > Leave > Default Leave behaviour.)
Configuring leave autofill
To configure leave autofill, follow the below steps.
Navigate to Settings > All Settings > Leave Autofill. You must have Admin permissions to access this page.
Scroll down to "Autofill leave requests" and follow the prompts to either create a new rule or edit and existing one. Firstly, select who the leave autofill rule will apply to, via tags. Then, select your autofill method(s). Note that you don't have to use all leave autofill methods, just as many as are applicable. Finally, click "create autofill configuration" to save your changes.
If applicable, you can create additional leave autofill rules for other employees by clicking the "+ New" button.
Default leave settings
If an employee has no regular hours of work or rostered shifts (and is not otherwise covered by one of the leave autofill rules outlined above), their leave requests will be filled using the value set in our "Default leave hours per full day of leave" setting (unless "No default leave hours" is selected.) You can access this by navigating to Settings > Leave.
FAQs and Troubleshooting
How do I edit the breakdown of hours of an autofilled leave request?
How do I edit the breakdown of hours of an autofilled leave request?
To edit the breakdown of hours of an autofilled request (or any leave request in general), navigate to Time & Attendance > Leave. Once you locate the leave request in question, click on View Request.
Next, navigate to the "2. Leave Hours" Tab and click Edit.
How can I tell what autofill method was used for a leave request?
How can I tell what autofill method was used for a leave request?
The 'timesheet history' shows which autofill method was used for each leave request. Admins can view the timesheet history at the bottom of the timesheets page when viewing timesheets for an individual employee.
In the timesheet history, look for the date of your leave request and how the leave was autofilled.
Article Keywords: autofill, auto fill, auto-fill, leave, leave hours