Any new Time Away policy assigned to an employee will automatically begin on their start date. Changing a policy later is effective-dated — see When a Policy Change Takes Effect below.
Policies can either be assigned through Batch actions or individually per each employee. Batch actions allow you to perform actions on multiple employees at the same time in the people directory page, and is available for Super Admins only.
To pick which employees you'd like to include in the batch action, go to the people directory and either:
Choose them individually by clicking on the checkbox next to their name, or
Choose everyone by clicking on the checkbox next to the "Full Name" column
Here, you can mass assign Time Away, Time Tracking, or Payroll Cycle policies to relevant employees.
Assign policies individually
To assign policies individually to each employee, enter the "Time Management" section in their profile.
Click on the three dots on the top right hand corner of the screen, hover the mouse over "Assign Policies" and choose if you want to assign a Time Tracking, Payroll Cycle or Time Away policy.
Once you assign the policies, you will be able to adjust the number of accrued days. If an employee has negotiated a different number of days than the original policy, you can adjust the policy to ensure that the change is recurring and will always affect the employee.
In this example, the current policy grants 24 days over the 12 month cycle, but you can now grant this employee a total of 26 days over the same period. This will be recurring until edited further.
When a Policy Change Takes Effect
Changing an employee's policy is effective-dated. When you make the change you choose the date it applies from — a specific date, or the employee's start date — and periods before that date keep the policy that was actually in effect at the time.
A change can also be scheduled ahead. The employee stays on their current policy and switches over automatically on the date you set.
The History tab records when a policy changed and which policy replaced which. This is visible to admins only.
A policy change can be undone, and accruals are recalculated as if it had never been applied.
Conflicts are surfaced before you assign rather than after. Assigning to a group validates every employee up front and reports per person, so a blocking issue on one employee no longer holds up the rest. Warnings you may see include a balance dropping below its floor, or approved bookings returning to a manager for re-approval.
Two cases limit the date you can choose:
If the old and new policy disagree on how the accrual period is built — the accrual frequency, or when the policy year starts — the change cannot be applied from a custom date. The only option is to override from the employee's start date, which recalculates everything.
If a later change already exists on that employee, your change covers only the span up to that later change. It does not override anything after it.
Reassigning a Policy and Existing Bookings
Reassigning a policy keeps the employee's existing time away bookings. Pending and approved bookings are no longer canceled when they move between policies.
If the new policy's balance no longer covers a booking that was already approved, that booking returns to pending and the employee's manager is asked to re-approve it, by email and through Slack or Teams if connected.
Adjust Time Away Balance
It is possible to add or remove days to the employee's balance without affecting their overall accrual days from the policy.
Simply click on "Adjust Time Away Balance" underneath the option to Assign Policies, select the reason e.g. vacation, and choose the number of days to add or remove. You can also add a note for each adjustment.
Balance Calculation and History
In the balance calculation section, you can see the adjustment with notes, date, user and amount.
In the History tab, you can select a specific year or view all events to see a complete change log showing how the balance changed over time. This makes it easier to track, audit, and understand balance changes at a glance.
If you would like to adjust employees' balance in mass, please send an excel file with all relevant email addresses and the balance (with accurate dates) to support@shapes.co and we can adjust if for you.