This page will help you setting up vacation and sickness absences for German clients. This is a general default based on our own research, so needs may vary, and it is therefore important to have a dialogue with clients on their specific needs. However, please remember that overly complicated setups might not deliver the expected results, so try to keep the settings as closed to the default as possible.
On a General note, vacation in Germany is based on the employee’s contract, but more days can be agreed upon.
The vacation period goes from January to December, and the days are delivered all at once. New employees will accrue 1/12 for each full month of employment during the calendar year, but vacation days will be delivered after 6 months ‘quarantine’. During this period, they are allowed to spend vacation, if approved by the employer. The days used, will be then deducted from the amount delivered at the end of the 6 months.
Example
Employee’s full accrual = 24 days
Employee started in February 2023.
In August Employee gets 24/12 *10 = 20
If Employee has spent 3 days in June, the days delivered will be 20 - 3 = 17
Yet, it is of significance whether the employee starts before or after July.
If the employee starts before June 30th, the above logic applies, but if he / she starts after June 30th, there is a specific logic in place.
In such a case, the employee will accrue 1/12 for each completed month of employment. Once in the new vacation year, the accrual will still be 1/12 for each full month of employment, until July of the vacation year, at which point the accrual will be substituted by the full accrual for the year.
Example
Employee’s full accrual = 24 days
Employee started in August 2023.
2023 accrual at the end of the month:
August 2023 = 2 days
September 2023 = 2 days
October 2023 = 2 days
November 2023 = 2 days
December 2023 = 2 days
Note - days should be spent in the vacation year. Residual transfer is allowed only if agreed with employer.
2024 accrual:
January 2024 = 2 days
February 2024 = 2 days
March 2024 = 2 days
April 2024 = 2 days
May 2024 = 2 days
June 2024 = 24 (full accrual)
If Employee has spent 3 days in March, the days delivered will be 24 - 3 = 21
Since it seems that the quarantine period often allows spending anyway, we have focused on creating a default setting that can accomodate most cases.
If the client needs to handle the second example in a stricter way, they will have to modify the deafult setup, or manage it manually.
Define vacation and spending year
Qualifying year will be January. And the vacation year January next year. As for the ‘active from’ year, you will have to agree that with the client.
As a default we have ‘Employees can have negative allowance’ enabled, as allowance is delivered at once, but spending can be allowed before for each completed month, if that is agreed with the employer.
Define allowance
The allocation or deduction part section can be setup differently, depending on whether the client wants the system to handle quarantine period or not.
With quarantine period
We will have 3 settings. One for new employees who are starting before July, one for new employees who are starting after July, and one for employees that have been there for more than 1 year.
New employee - Employed Before july
The days allocated will depend on the agreement with the client.
The allocation should happen immediately (when they match the criterias), and then each year.
The criterias to be met are the following:
-
Employment is shorter than 12 months
-
Employment date is before July 1st
In this case, we deliver the full amount, as soon as they have crossed over the quarantine period.
New employee - Employed After July
The days allocated will depend on the agreement with the client.
The allocation should happen immediately (when they match the criterias), and then each year.
The criterias to be met are the following:
-
Employment is shorter than 12 months
-
Employment date is after July 1st
In this case, we partial amount (1/12 for each month of employment), as soon as they have crossed over the quarantine period. We also round up the amount.
Employee - More than one year
The days allocated will depend on the agreement with the client.
The allocation should happen each year.
As a default we do not have residual.
For Sickness related absences, there is nothing special to setup for the allowance. The important thing is to remember to allow negative numbers, and setup the allowance to 0. Period will be from January to December for both spending and accrual.
Although not in all cases, sickness can require a certificate from day one. Depending on the client, if that is what they need, you should make sure to setup the absence to request a certificate.
It is also important to setup an extra sickness absence for cases where the employee has been at work and is going home sick (same setup as sickness, including approval), as this is important for payroll.
Child sick requires not only a certificate, but also specific information about the children. As this is not possible to implement in Emply, what can be done is to add a comment in the absence type (for example ‘Please make sure to also provide following information about each child: first name, last name, date of birth’), so that the employees are prompted to deliver the information.