Tracking modes — balance, spell, and unlimited#
For: Manager | Admin You’ll need: Nothing.
Every leave policy in Shiftavo runs in one of three tracking modes. The mode is the most important decision on the form — it shapes which fields you’ll fill in and what the ledger records when a request is approved.
What it means#
Balance. Shiftavo keeps a running hours balance per person. Approving a request books hours against it; revoking puts them back. Vacation is the classic case: a yearly entitlement, accruals through the year, a ceiling, and a balance the worker can see.
Spell. Shiftavo doesn’t deduct from a pool — it records each absence as its own bounded “spell” with a start and end. Sick leave under Swiss EFZG §3 works this way: each illness spell consumes its own continued-pay entitlement, and a follow-up illness inside the linking window extends the original spell rather than starting a new one. See EFZG §3 spell linking.
Unlimited. No accrual, no ceiling, no tier ladder. Approval still creates a request and a calendar event, but no balance moves. Use this for leave types you want to log and visualise without limiting — paid bereavement, study leave, jury duty.
When to use which#
Leave type |
Mode |
Why |
|---|---|---|
Vacation / annual leave |
Balance |
Pooled entitlement that accrues and carries over. |
Sick leave (CH, EFZG §3) |
Spell |
Continued-pay entitlement is per illness, not per pool. |
Unpaid leave |
Balance or unlimited |
Use balance if you cap it; unlimited if you only need a record. |
Paid bereavement, jury duty |
Unlimited |
You log it but don’t deduct from anything. |
Time-comp time off |
Balance |
Hours come in via Time compensation; this policy spends them. |
If you’re not sure, start with Balance — you can always cap entitlement to zero and still get the calendar event and audit trail, then switch later as your needs sharpen.
How part-days are charged#
A leave block with times on it — as opposed to an all-day block — is billed against the person’s working hours, not against the wall clock. Shiftavo walks the block day by day in the employee’s time zone and charges only the working time it actually covers:
A day the person doesn’t work costs nothing, and so do the hours outside their working window.
A day the block covers end-to-end costs the policy’s full day rate — the same as booking it as an all-day absence.
A day it covers partly costs the overlapping hours, capped at the day rate, so no single day can ever cost more than a whole day off.
An employment type with no declared start and end times — casual and on-call staff — counts the whole calendar day as its window.
How it shows in the app#
On the policy form, choosing a tracking mode reveals the fields that mode uses and hides the rest. Balance reveals accrual, entitlement, max balance, and carry-over. Spell reveals the linking window. Unlimited collapses most of the form down to identity fields.
When a request is approved, the ‘Leave transactions’ ledger records what happened: a BOOKING for balance policies, a SPELL_OPEN for spell policies, nothing for unlimited.