Chapter 46 — Leave groups

Policies describe entitlements; groups decide who gets which. A driver, an office worker and a residential guard do not take leave on the same terms, and a leave group is the bundle of policies each of them draws from. Most small companies need exactly one, which is why every workspace starts with one already written and marked for review. This chapter is the group as a concept, the seeded one, how a person's group is found, and how to give a shift or a person another.

What this chapter covers

• 46.1 What a leave group is; the default group
• 46.2 Reviewing the seeded group: statutory or starter package
• 46.3 Which group applies: employee, shift, company
• 46.4 Assigning employees and shifts

The concept

A policy answers "how much of this type"; a group answers "which types, for whom". Keeping them apart lets one Annual Leave policy serve every group that includes it, and lets a second group leave it out. The trap is a person with no group at all, who is allocated nothing and can apply for nothing; a workspace needs a default group that catches everyone not placed deliberately, and a rule for which group wins when a person could belong to more than one.

How Operentra handles it

• Leave › Leave Groups lists each group with its policies, how many employees and shifts it is assigned to, a Default badge, and a Not reviewed badge until someone confirms it.
• One group per person, resolved in order: the group set on the employee record, else the default leave group of their shift, else the company's default group. Allocation and applications use only that one.
• A group holds policies, ticked in the editor under Annual Quota and Cyclic Accrual; a policy in no group applies to nobody.
• A new workspace is seeded with one group built from its country's leave set (a statutory package where the country's law sets leave, a starter package where it does not), flagged as the default and marked Not reviewed until HR confirms it.
• Deleting a group assigned to any employee or shift is refused with the counts.
• Who: leave.configure (Super Admin, HR Manager) creates, edits, confirms and deletes; leave.view_all reads.

Walkthrough

Northwind has one group, Office Staff, the default, reviewed on 20 September, holding all six policies, assigned to all fifty employees directly and to the Office Shift as its default. The walkthrough reads it and adds a second.

46.1 What a leave group is; the default group

Leave Groups shows Office Staff with its description ("Standard full-time employees — a starter leave package to adjust to your own policy"), the six policies as chips (a cyclic policy reads as "N days per M worked"), Assigned: 50 employees, 1 shift, and the Default badge. Add Leave Group opens the editor: a name ("Office Staff" is the placeholder), a description of who it is for, the Default group checkbox with its hint (company-wide fallback), and Leave Policies in this Group as checkboxes under two headings, Annual Quota and Cyclic Accrual; when no policy is active the editor says to configure policies on the Leave Types page first.

Exactly one group should be the default. It is what a person gets when neither they nor their shift names one, so it should be the ordinary package, not the exceptional one.

46.2 Reviewing the seeded group: statutory or starter package

A new workspace does not start empty: a group, Office Staff, is written from the country's leave set, Annual, Sick, Maternity and the rest, with their policies, flagged as the default and marked Not reviewed, whose hint asks you to confirm it matches your policy. Where the country's law sets the entitlements, its description calls it "the full statutory leave package"; where it does not, as in the United States, "a starter leave package to adjust to your own policy". Confirm clears the badge; editing and saving the group clears it too. Northwind's was confirmed on 20 September, which is why the badge is gone; a fresh workspace is where to see it.

Review means reading each policy in Chapter 45 against your handbook, not just pressing Confirm: the seeded quotas are the legal minimum or a neutral starter, and a company that offers more edits them before the first allocation.

46.3 Which group applies: employee, shift, company

A person draws from one group, found in this order:

1. The employee record: Leave Group on the Add or Edit Employee form (Chapter 16), or "Inherit from shift" to leave it unset.
2. The shift: the Default Leave Group on their current shift (Chapter 35).
3. The company: the group with the Default badge.

The first found wins and the others are ignored, so a person placed on a group directly keeps it when they change shifts, and a shift's group reaches everyone on that shift who has no group of their own. Allocation (Chapter 47) and the apply form (Chapter 48) both resolve the group this way, so a policy left out of the resolved group is not offered and not allocated, whatever other groups contain it.

46.4 Assigning employees and shifts

There is no assignment screen on the group itself; a group is assigned where the person or the shift is edited. On the employee form, Leave Group lists the groups with the default marked and "Inherit from shift" as the no-choice; on the shift form, Default Leave Group does the same with "None (company default)". The Assigned column on Leave Groups counts both.

Make a second group, Field Staff, with Annual, Sick and Leave Without Pay only, and set it as the Default Leave Group of a Punch Required shift; everyone on that shift without a group of their own now draws from it, and the Assigned column shows the shift. A group that is still assigned to anyone cannot be deleted; the refusal names the counts, and the fix is to move them first.

What happens next

• Allocation (Chapter 47) writes balances only for the policies in each person's resolved group.
• A changed group takes effect at the next allocation for new balances; existing balances for the year are not rewritten.

What the employee sees

The leave types their group contains, on their balances and in the apply form's type list, and nothing of the group's name.

Common mistakes

1. No default group. Anyone not placed explicitly has no leave at all.
2. Two groups flagged default. Set one; the badge is the fallback, not a label.
3. A policy in no group. It applies to nobody, however well written.
4. Confirming the seeded group unread. The quotas are statutory minimums or a neutral starter; edit before the first allocation.
5. Expecting a shift's group to override an employee's own. The employee's assignment wins.
6. Deleting a group to rebuild it. Refused while assigned; edit it in place or move people first.
7. Changing a group mid-year and expecting balances to follow. Balances are written at allocation; a mid-year change shows at the next one.
8. Mixing cyclic and annual policies without meaning to. A group can hold both, and a person then earns rest days from work and from the quota at once.

Practice

Use your own trial workspace, not a customer's.

1. Open Leave Groups and read the seeded group: badges, policies, assigned counts. Open its editor and read the two policy sections.
2. If the Not reviewed badge is there, read each policy in Chapter 45 first, then Confirm.
3. Add "Field Staff" with three policies and no default flag; read the Assigned column.
4. Set Field Staff as a shift's Default Leave Group (Chapter 35) and an employee's own Leave Group (Chapter 16); read the counts again.
5. Try to delete Field Staff and read the refusal; remove both assignments and delete it.

Quiz

1. In what order is a person's leave group found?

Their own assignment on the employee record, then their shift's default leave group, then the company's default group; the first found is used alone.

2. What is the Not reviewed badge?

The seeded group's reminder that it was built from the country's leave set and should be checked against the company's policy; Confirm, or editing and saving, clears it.

3. Where are employees and shifts assigned to a group?

On the employee form's Leave Group field and the shift form's Default Leave Group field; the group page only counts them.

4. What happens to a policy that is in no group?

It is allocated to nobody and offered to nobody.

5. When can a group be deleted?

Only when no employee and no shift is assigned to it; the refusal names the counts.