Currently, there are four options available for Balance Cap Type:

• None - If this option is selected, no cap will be applied and a user can accumulate unlimited accrued amounts.

• Per-Period - If this option is selected, the cap amounts are enforced every time an accrual period is posted.

• Annually (Hire Date) - If this option is selected, the cap amounts are only enforced once per year, on the accrual period posting that immediately follows their Hire Date anniversary.

• Annually (Calendar Year) - If this option is selected, the cap amounts are only enforced once per year, on the accrual period posting that immediately follows the January 1st calendar date. If the Apply Accrual Calendar Year Cap on Prior Year Balance (unatime.accruals.calendar_year_cap.cap_prior_year_balance) property is enabled, the cap amount is applied to the final balance as of the last day of the prior year, regardless of time of posting. If this property is false, the balance cap is applied to the balance at the time of posting.

Note: Accrual Cap Type has three options: None, Per-Period, or Annually (Calendar Year).

When the posting process occurs, the cap limitations are considered and if a cap is exceeded, a comment indicating the cap threshold will accompany any reduced or negative accrual entry.  When determining cap enforcement, the balance cap is applied before the accrual cap. If the balance cap is reached, then you cannot continue to accrue hours.

Note regarding Service Contract Act (SCA) yearly plans: For yearly accrual plans where On Anniversary is true, the accrual post should happen daily. The posting may occur automatically or manually. Employees earn their leave on the anniversary of their hire date. For hire dates of 2/29, 3/1 is the anniversary date for non-leap years.

---

When are caps applied?

When used, the cap amounts are applied during the posting process. The first accrual period posted after the triggering date will also trigger the application of the cap limitations.  The Balance Cap Type specified will determine when exactly any cap limitation is applied as follows:

• Per Period -- For these cap types:

• • the accrued amounts are processed and added to the total accrued amount

  • then available accrual balance is calculated considering actuals through the end of the period being posted

  • then the cap logic is applied.  
    
    For example, suppose your policy is that you can never accrue time that would leave you with more than 120 available hours, the accrual process would run, first adding the handful of hours accrued for that previous period, then calculating the balance by subtracting the number of actual hours taken, and then the cap limitation would be applied to make sure you are not left with an amount greater than 120.
     

• Annually (Calendar Year)-- For these cap types the cap logic is applied first to the current existing balance (that is, total amount previously accrued minus total actuals taken through the end of the previous accrual period), and then the next accrual amount is applied.  The reason these cap types are handled differently is that in the annual scenario, you are typically looking to make sure the user doesn't accumulate and carry more than x hours into the next year (but do not necessarily have any constraint as to the total amount they can accumulate during any specific year).
  
  As an example, an accrual plan of type "Annually (Calendar Year)" -- will be triggered when posting the first accrual period that begins in the new year.  

• Annually (Hire Date) -- This cap type is very similar to the Annually (Calendar Year) cap type, with two differences:

• • The "trigger date" is the user's Hire Date (as defined on their Person Profile) vs January 1.

  • Whether the cap is applied before or after the post can be controlled via the Accrual Hire Date Cap (post first, then cap) (unatime.accruals.hire_date_cap.post_first) property.  By default, this property is enabled and thus the new accrued amounts are added and then the cap logic is applied.  By disabling the property, the cap logic would be applied first and then the next accrual amount would be added.
    
    As an example, an accrual plan of type "Annually (Hire Date)" -- will be triggered when posting the first accrual period that begins after the users Hire Date.

 

Accrual Cap Type

When determining cap enforcement, the balance cap is applied before the accrual cap. If the balance cap is reached, then you cannot continue to accrue hours. The values set up on the Admin >> Setup Accrual Plans >> Schedule page for Accrual Cap Type and Accrual Cap Hours limit the total number of hours a user can accrue in a specified period in the Admin >> Accruals posting process. For example, if the timesheet user has an Accrual Cap Type of Per-Period and Accrual Cap Hours set to 8, then the user can only earn a maximum of 8 hours for that period, even if they have worked enough hours to accrue more than 8 hours. The user can earn another 8 hours in the next period.

For employees covered under the Service Contract Act, the accrual cap is set according to the Service Contract Act wage determination guidelines. See https://sam.gov/content/wage-determinations for more information.

 

Which actuals are considered?

In order to determine the number of unused accrued hours for the purposes of the cap logic, the system will use the work date of the time actuals --  to include the time charged to days between the accrual association begin date and the accrual period end date of the accrual period being posted.   To be clear, we do not consider actuals charged to future timesheets beyond the end date of the accrual period being posted.