If an employee's leave balance is higher than the accrual rule should give, there is usually a manually added entitlement (or a brought forward amount) on top of the accrued entitlements. OrangeHRM adds all valid entitlements together, so a manual entitlement is never replaced by an accrual. It adds to it.
Why this happens
An employee's balance for a leave type is the total of every entitlement record that is valid for the period. Each record has an entitlement type:
- Accrual: credited automatically by the leave type's accrual rules.
- Added: entered by an admin through Add Entitlements or a bulk upload.
- Brought Forward: unused balance carried over from the previous leave period by the carry forward rules.
For example, if an employee has accrued 5 days and an admin also adds 3 days, the balance is 8 days. This often happens when an entitlement was added by hand before accruals were turned on, or when an opening balance was loaded and then the accruals for the same period also ran.
The accrual cap can also play a part. In the accrual rules, When to stop accrual and Include Entitlement Type(s) decide which entitlements count toward the cap. If Added is not included, accruals keep running until the accrued amount alone reaches the cap. Any added days then push the balance above it.
How to check and correct the balance
Step 1 - Go to Leave > Entitlements > Entitlement List.
Step 2 - Search for the employee and leave type.
Check the Entitlement Type, Valid From, Valid To and Days columns. Look for Added or Brought Forward records alongside the Accrual records.
If an Added record is a mistake, edit or delete it from this list.
To stop this happening again, go to Leave > Configure > Leave Types, click the Leave Rule icon for the leave type
Open Accrual Rules. Check When to stop accrual and Include Entitlement Type(s) for each employee group.
Things to note
- Only Added entitlements can be deleted. Accrual and Brought Forward records cannot.
- Entitlements in a past leave period, or belonging to terminated employees, cannot be deleted.
- When an entitlement is removed, any leave already taken is moved to the employee's other valid entitlements for the same period.