🔍 What is Leaves Settings?
Leaves Settings is the single screen where you define your company-wide leave policy — how leaves accrue, carry forward, lapse, and encash for every employee. Once configured, every Leave application, every monthly Salary calculation, and every leave-related figure on Reports follows the rules you set here.
📍 Screen: Settings → Leaves. The Leave Details aside opens with two modes — a read-only view and an editable form. Click Edit (top-right) to switch to the form; click ✕ to close.
🎯 Why this screen matters
- It is the policy source for the entire HRM module — Leaves, Salary, Attendance, and the Leave Statement on every employee profile read from the rules you configure here.
- Per-leave-type quotas, carry-forward limits, and encashment caps are all driven from this one place.
- Once you generate the very first salary in DaaiSuite, certain fields here become locked — so it is important to set this up before payroll begins.
⚠️ Important: Leave Settings stay fully editable until any leave value is filled or salary has been generated. Once payroll begins, fields that have already been used to compute balances become read-only to protect historic accuracy.
📋 Leave Rules
The top section of the form holds three policy-level toggles that apply across every leave type.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Sandwich Policy | When ON, weekends and holidays that fall between two leave days are also counted as leave (i.e., they are sandwiched into the leave block). Applies only when your salary calculation method is set to Month Days. If salary is calculated on Working Days, this toggle is auto-disabled and a warning is shown. |
| Allow Paid Leave in Probation Period? | When ON, an employee who is still inside their probation period can apply for paid leave. When OFF, leaves applied during probation will not be paid. |
| Allow Paid Leave in Notice Period? | When ON, an employee who has submitted resignation can still draw paid leave during their notice period. When OFF, leaves taken after the notice start date will not be paid. |
💡 Sandwich Policy — quick example
An employee takes leave on Friday and Monday, with Saturday + Sunday as the weekend in between.
- Sandwich ON: the leave is counted as 4 days (Fri + Sat + Sun + Mon).
- Sandwich OFF: the leave is counted as 2 days (Fri + Mon only).
The same logic extends to public holidays sandwiched between leave days.
📅 Leave Accrual
This section controls how much leave each leave type grants per year, and when the balance is added to an employee’s ledger. The leave types you see here are the ones configured under Settings → Dropdown Settings → Leave Types.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Type | Name of the leave category (e.g., Casual, Medical, Emergency). Read-only on this screen — managed under Dropdown Settings. |
| Yearly Quota | Total number of days an employee earns for this leave type in a full year. The system shows a derived Monthly Quota (Yearly Quota ÷ 12) for reference. |
| Accrual Method | How the yearly quota is added to the ledger. The default is Monthly — a fraction of the yearly quota is credited each month at salary generation, so the balance grows over the year rather than appearing as a lump sum on day one. |
📌 How accrual is credited
- Monthly accrual is added to each employee’s leave balance at the time of salary generation for that month.
- The first time an employee becomes eligible (created with Is Employee = Yes, or toggled to employee later), the system performs a starter allocation automatically — you do not have to back-fill manually.
- If you need to seed historical balances for employees who started before DaaiSuite, use Opening Balance Import (covered below).
🔁 Leave Carry Forward
Leave balances do not have to vanish at year-end. The Carry Forward block decides how many unused days roll over into the next cycle, and when the cycle resets.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Type | Leave category (read-only). |
| Carry Forward Limit | Maximum number of unused days that roll over into the next leave cycle for this leave type. Anything above this limit lapses on the lapse month. |
| Lapse On | The calendar month at which the leave year ends and unused leave above the carry-forward limit lapses. Pick the month from the dropdown on the first row — the same month is then applied to every leave type automatically (so the cycle stays aligned across categories). |
ℹ️ Tip: Set the Carry Forward Limit so it is never higher than the yearly quota itself — otherwise unused days can never lapse and balances may grow unrealistically over time.
💵 Leave Encashment
Encashment lets an employee convert eligible unused leave into a cash payout. This block enables the policy and caps the converted days.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Type | Leave category (read-only). |
| Encashable Limit | Maximum number of unused days that can be encashed for this leave type. The system warns you if you set this higher than the Carry Forward Limit, because you can’t encash days that wouldn’t have been carried forward. |
| Encash On | When the encashment is processed. The default is Exit — encashment is calculated and paid out as part of the employee’s exit / Full & Final settlement. |
💡 How encashment value is computed
The cash value of each encashed day is based on the employee’s Basic salary, divided by 30 days in the month, multiplied by the number of encashed days. (Earlier policies used a 26-day divisor; DaaiSuite has standardised to /30 across the system, so the daily rate stays consistent with how leave is debited everywhere else.)
📥 Opening Balance Import (one-time)
If your team is moving to DaaiSuite from another HR system, you almost certainly already have leave balances on the books. Opening Balance Import lets you seed those starting balances in bulk — so the very first salary you generate uses the correct numbers.
📍 Screen: click Edit on the Leave Details aside → the Opening Balance Import button appears at the top-right (visible only when import is still allowed). Clicking it opens the Bulk Import Leave Balances modal.
Steps
- Click Edit on the Leaves Settings aside.
- Click Opening Balance Import.
- In the modal, pick the Leave Starting Month and Leave Starting Year — this is the month/year from which DaaiSuite will treat the imported balances as the truth.
- Click Download Sample File. The Excel comes pre-populated with your active employees in rows.
- Fill in the leave-balance columns (Casual, Medical, Emergency, etc.) for each employee. Leave the headers and employee identifier columns untouched.
- Click Choose File, pick the saved Excel, and click Import & Validate.
- Review the validation summary — Total / Valid / Errors are shown side-by-side.
- If there are errors, click Download Error Report, fix the rows, and re-upload. If everything is valid, click Confirm & Import to commit the balances.
⚠️ One-time only
- The Opening Balance Import button is available only before the first salary is generated for the company. Once you generate any salary, the button hides — the system now treats accrual as the source of truth.
- The import is locked to the current financial month/year and is allowed exactly once, while the leave-start month is still unset and no salary has been generated. This is deliberate — it stops anyone from quietly rewriting historical leave balances after payroll has run.
- If you have already generated a salary and need to correct a balance, use the per-employee leave adjustment under the Leave Statement tab on the Employee profile, not this importer.
✏️ Editing & Saving
- Click Edit at the top-right of the Leave Details aside to enter edit mode.
- The form is divided into the four sections above — Leave Rules, Leave Accrual, Leave Carry Forward, Leave Encashment.
- The system prevents you from saving an Encashable Limit that is greater than the Carry Forward Limit for the same leave type — you will see a warning and the save is blocked until you fix it.
- Click Submit at the bottom of the form to save changes. Click the ✕ icon to discard changes and return to the read-only view.
🔒 What becomes read-only after the first salary? Each per-leave-type cell becomes editable or read-only based on whether that leave type has already been used to credit / debit balances. If a row is locked, it means changing it would retroactively distort an already-issued salary slip — create a new leave type or adjust at the Employee level instead.
🔗 How Leaves Settings interact with the rest of the app
- Leave application — when an employee applies for leave under HRM → Leaves, the form pulls the per-leave-type quota and balance from the policy you set here. Probation / Notice period flags also gate whether the leave is paid.
- Salary generation — monthly accrual happens at salary generation, the Sandwich rule decides how borderline weekends/holidays are counted, and any LWP (Leave Without Pay) deduction respects the policy above. Salary continues to read Leave directly — Attendance is evidence, Leave is policy, Salary is payment.
- Leave Statement (Employee profile) — the running balances per leave type, accruals, carry-forward, and encashment computations on this tab are all driven by Leaves Settings.
- Attendance × Leave Reconciliation — HR users with Leave Override can resolve mismatches between biometric attendance and applied leave; any leave they create from the reconciliation grid still respects the rules defined here.
- Dashboard & Reports — the leave figures shown on the Dashboard and on Reports follow the same policy. (Note: the Dashboard’s Absent count reflects only Rejected leave applications.)
📌 Key Points
- Set up before payroll: Configure Leaves Settings before generating the first salary — many fields lock once payroll begins.
- One Lapse Month for all types: Picking the Lapse On month on the first row applies the same month to every leave type, so cycles stay aligned.
- Encashable ≤ Carry Forward: The system blocks saving an encashable limit that exceeds the carry-forward limit for the same type.
- Sandwich Policy is paired with Month Days: If your salary calculation switches to Working Days, the Sandwich toggle is automatically disabled.
- Encashment uses /30 days: Daily encashment value is Basic ÷ 30, in line with how leaves are debited everywhere in DaaiSuite.
- Opening Balance Import is one-time: Available only before the first salary; the button hides forever after that.
- Attendance never auto-creates Leave: Attendance evidence does not silently fill the leave ledger — Leave is always policy-driven from this screen.
💡 Tips
- Define your leave types first under Settings → Dropdown Settings → Leave Types, then come here to set their quotas, carry-forward, and encashment.
- Keep the Carry Forward Limit at or below the Yearly Quota — this prevents unused leave from accumulating indefinitely.
- Enable encashment selectively — common practice is to allow it for Earned / Privilege categories rather than every type.
- If you are migrating from another system, do Opening Balance Import on day one and only generate the first salary after the import is committed.
- For worked examples of how the policy here translates into actual leave numbers per employee, see Examples – Leave Balance.