With every request, Bamboo presents to the decision-maker its translation of how many vacation days the request represents. It's this amount of days that will be deducted from the Employee's VPT balance. Bamboo does not know the Employee's work schedule and so it assumes that the Employee works one shift per day on each day of the 5 days of the workweek - with no weekend shifts. If this is the case for the Employee making the request, the calculation is correct. Otherwise, decision-makers need to pro-actively translate the vacation request dates into the appropriate number of days that will be deducted from the Employee's VPT balance.
Examples of the Standard Schedule Assumed by Bamboo
Below are several examples of schedules for which Bamboo's default calculation fits perfectly. It ought to be noted that the calculation is not impacted if actual shift length varies by day or what part of the day the shift covers (day, evening, night etc.)
Five Shifts of Equal Length Across the Workweek
Five Shifts of Varied Lengths Across the Workweek
How to Calculate the VPT Used With Non-standard Schedules
Every full shift that an Employee requests to take off ought to be counted as one VPT day and every partial shift requested off ought to count as a pro-ration of the time taken off versus the length of the scheduled shift. Therefore, to calculate the number of vacation days, you need to look ahead to / predict the employees schedule over the period of the vacation request and mark in Bamboo the full and partial shifts that will be missed.
Example One: The requested time away is highlighted in blue. In this case Bamboo will present the decision-maker with a total of 5 days (because the request spans 5 weekdays). The supervisor would override Bamboo's assumed 5 days and the result would be 4; the number of shifts that will be missed across those dates.
Example Two: The requested time away is highlighted in blue. In this case Bamboo will present the decision-maker with a total of 6 days (because the request spans 6 weekdays). The supervisor would override the 6 days with 2; the number of shifts that will be missed across those dates.
What if it's hard to predict the Employee's Schedule?
When its hard to predict the Employee's schedule over the period of the vacation request, make your best guess and then diarize to check the calculation when you get clarity on the employee's schedule.
What happens if the Employee's schedule changes?
Work schedules can change between when a time away requests approved and the actual time away. In these cases, its incumbent on the Supervisor and Employee to adjust the time away calculation accordingly.