Open New Absence Year Utility

Use the Open New Absence Year utility to start tracking time earned and taken for a new absence year. You can have only one active absence accrual year. You cannot have different active absence years for different employees.

When you open a new absence accrual year, DPS zeroes out all year-to-date accrual totals for all employees. This process includes year-to-date hours earned and taken. The current year's ending balance for a benefit plan becomes the starting balance for the new year. This initialization procedure affects absence accrual data only; it does not affect any other DPS data.

To determine starting balances for the new absence year, DPS checks the following Absence Accrual Setup settings:

  • Pre-accrue hours: If you apply this option to a benefit plan, DPS accrues the full number of hours for the absence year when you open a new absence year.
  • Carry over Limit: This option allows you to enter the maximum number of hours that can be carried over into a new accrual year for a particular benefit plan. When an employee reaches this maximum, DPS no longer accrues hours for this benefit plan for this employee.

When you open a new benefit accrual year, DPS records the opening of the absence accrual year on the Posting Log Review report. The entry displays as an AL transaction type, to indicate that it is an audit log posting.

If you use multiple companies, you open a new absence year for the active company. If you have the same benefit code set up for more than one company, when you run the Open New Absence Year utility, the pre-accrual runs for the active company only.