Flexitime account

In the Base data under "Billing, Time Tracking, and Vacation Periods," you can choose various time tracking options for your employees that each reflect the employment contract. Select "Time Tracking with Flextime Account" primarily for full-time employees, as setting up a flextime account is only possible for such employees. For freelancers and contractors, this type of billing is limited to pure time tracking with breaks and possible surcharges.

Under Base Data > Employees > Billing Period, first enter the validity of the billing period in addition to the above-mentioned billing type. The default is the current date. Since changes also affect past billing periods, please create a new billing period if changes should only be valid from a certain date onwards. The changes are visible in a historical record.

Check the days on which the employee works. Regardless of this, the employee can be booked or record working hours for any day. This section is only about how many days per week the target hours should be calculated. For example, if someone works full-time, target hours should be calculated for five days a week (usually Monday to Friday) (for full-time, usually 8 hours per day).

Enter a monthly salary or hourly wage.

Working Hours

Enter the hours here that should be worked per day, week, or month according to the employment contract. For weekly hours, the specified hours are deducted weekly. Therefore, for the typical 40-hour week with 5 working days, we strongly recommend keeping the setting at 8 hours per day. For monthly specified hours, you can check “distribute over working days.” The system will then calculate how many hours per day need to be worked based on the number of working days in a month. If this box is not checked, the target hours per day will be calculated as 0 hours. This means the employee accumulates flextime throughout the month, and the working hours recorded in the system are only deducted at the end of the month, when the system knows how many target hours should have been worked. Distributing hours over working days also provides the employee with a better overview of their flextime account.

If different target hours should be calculated for an employee for each weekday, click on "distribute over working days" when entering the daily working hours. You can then define the respective target hours for each weekday.

Vacation/Sick/ Holidays

Enter the hours per day that should be calculated in case of vacation, illness, or holidays. Note: if working hours are calculated per day, it makes sense to set the value to 0 here. Otherwise, in case of exceedances (e.g., night work extending into a holiday), hours will be deducted from the flextime account. If hours are calculated per month, you should enter the desired value here. Otherwise, the hours in the aforementioned cases will not be credited.

Optionally, the average working time of the last 13 weeks can be used for the calculation. Please note that when switching to this calculation method, a new billing period should be created.

Flextime

If you want to maintain a flextime account, select “Carry forward flextime from the previous period” for new employees. If you have made changes to the billing for an employee, you can enter a starting value here, which is based on the flextime hours previously worked.

Breaks

Here you can specify if and how long a break must be taken after a certain working time. If you check “Automatically deduct breaks,” these breaks will automatically be deducted from the working time, even if they are not recorded by the employee. Since automatically deducted breaks cannot be assigned to a specific period, they cannot be considered for salary components that relate to a specific period.

In general, the automatic break deduction is only a support tool to comply with legal break requirements. The employee should ideally actively clock in and out for their breaks.

The default setting here is the legal regulation according to §4 of the German Working Hours Act (ArbZG). Please note that different regulations may apply for other countries.

Capping

If you set a cap, such as 10 working hours per day, any hours worked beyond this will not be credited to the flextime account.

If you have agreed with your employee that a certain number of overtime hours are compensated with the salary, these can be automatically deducted here at the end of the month. This can be done on a flextime or monthly basis. In both cases, if the employee has fewer overtime hours, the cap will be set to a maximum of 0; if they have more overtime hours, they will be reduced by the amount specified here.

With the capping to a maximum number of hours per month, you can cap your employees' flextime balance to a fixed value at the end of the month. If the employee's balance is lower than the value specified here, no capping will take place.

Target Days

If an employee is contractually required to work a certain number of days per month, this can be recorded here. Target days function like target hours, essentially as a second flextime account.

In parallel with the target and actual hours, working days can also be counted here based on work, travel, and off days and the billing factor for employees. If this feature is not to be used, the value can be left at 0.

If you have made changes to the billing for an employee, select “Carry forward target days from the previous period.” For new employees, enter a new starting value for the target days.

Surcharges

If you pay surcharges, you can determine the amount of the surcharge here, which will then be considered by the system in the payroll.

If you pay surcharges for night work, you can define the designated period for this here. This will then be displayed separately in the time tracking.

You can also specify here how the surcharges should be paid: as a “tax-free surcharge” or as a “credit to the flextime account.”

Time Tracking

Here you can decide how employees can record their time: manually or via time clock. For contractors, time tracking is only possible manually.

Vacation

Specify here how many days of vacation the employee has per year, whether it should be calculated based on the calendar year or employment year, and when it may expire. For a new employee, create a new vacation account. If you have made changes to the payroll for an employee, you can enter a starting value here, which is based on the remaining vacation days.

Availability

If your employees should only be available for inquiries during specific periods, you can set them here. Employees can then only be requested for events that fall within the specified availability periods.