Time and leave
Entitlement, accrual and carryover
How an allowance is earned, when it resets, what survives the reset — and the four shapes real statutes take.
How leave works covers what a policy is and how the ledger records it. This is the arithmetic: how a balance comes to exist in the first place, and what happens to it at the end of a leave year.
Four ways entitlement is earned
The method is a field on the policy, not a branch on a country code — a jurisdiction the product ships no preset for still works, it simply starts generic.
| Method | Means | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | The whole allowance is granted at the start of the leave year | The common European shape, and the default |
| Monthly | Earned month by month over the year | The UAE's two days a month between six and twelve months of service is this |
| Per hour worked | Earned as a fraction of hours actually worked, commonly one hour per thirty | US state and city paid-sick-leave statutes |
| None | No balance is tracked. Requests are recorded and never debited | Unpaid leave, which is a real category rather than an absence of one |
Per-hour accrual is why everything is in minutes
One hour per thirty worked cannot be expressed in days without rounding somebody's statutory entitlement away. Minutes are what let a US hourly sick-leave accrual and a UAE half-day share one unit. See Units.
When the year turns
A leave year runs on a calendar basis, from somebody's start date, or on a fixed date the organisation chooses. Each gives different people different reset dates, which is why it is a policy setting rather than an organisation-wide one.
The cycle is not always twelve months. South Africa grants thirty sick days per thirty-six month cycle, and a hard-coded leave year cannot represent it — so the cycle length is a number.
What survives the reset
- A carryover cap
- How much unused entitlement moves into the new year. Anything above it is forfeited at the boundary, which is a ledger entry like everything else rather than a balance being overwritten.
- An expiry window
- How long carried-over leave survives before it lapses. Carrying five days that must be used by March is common, and without the window they would sit on the balance indefinitely.
Rollover runs per engagement, and skips contractors
Somebody employed at one entity and contracting at another accrues on the employment only, because a contractor holds no statutory entitlement. Both accrual and rollover iterate every engagement in force — a shared balance would let one employer's allowance fund an absence from the other. See Engagements.
Who is eligible, and when
- A probation gate. Some entitlements do not start until probation ends; some accrue during it and cannot be taken until after. Both are expressible, because both exist.
- A service gate, separate from probation. Parental and long-service schemes commonly require one or two years regardless of whether probation ended long ago.
- Tenure bands. Mexico's vacation ladder rises from twelve days to twenty by year five, then adds two every five years. The longest qualifying band wins.
Long absences are not paid at one rate
Extended sick leave and parental leave commonly step down: full pay, then half pay, then unpaid. A policy holds those tiers, and an approved absence is split into pay bands across them — so a request spanning the boundary is part paid at one rate and part at another, rather than rounded to whichever the first day fell in.
Each tier also records who funds it. Georgian maternity leave is largely state-funded with an employer top-up, and payroll cannot split the cost without knowing which part is not the employer's. The bands travel with the approval event rather than being recomputed later.
Bands are scoped to the engagement
Bands step down as an entitlement is used up, so one employer's usage must not push the other's rate down for somebody holding two engagements.
A minimum you cannot save your way under
A policy can record the statutory minimum for its jurisdiction alongside what the organisation actually gives. Saving an entitlement below the minimum recorded on the same policy is refused — it is a configuration that would save cleanly and then quietly underpay every person it applied to.