We have been getting allot of calls concerning how the vacation accrual works with regard to cutting it back to 360 hours (45 days) on October 1, November 1, December 1, & January 1. The Human Resource Information System (PeopleSoft) will automatically take you down to 360 hours (45 days) on each of the above dates. Therefore, you must be under 360 hours at the end of the pay period before the pay period containing the 1st of the month.
For instance, September 27 is the pay ending date before the pay period containing October 1st. So, for the pay period ending September 27th (payday October 3rd) you must have your vacation accrual down to 360 hours. This is because on October 1st your vacation accrual will be automatically taken to 360 hours if you were over 360 hours on the pay ending September 27th (payday October 3rd).
Lets say that you have as of today, September 22, 376 vacation hours. That means that in order not to loose any vacation accrual you need to take 16 hours of vacation plus whatever your vacation accrual is for a pay period. This is because once PeopleSoft has deducted the vacation used in a pay period it then pluses you your accrual for that pay period. So, lets say you are a 16 to 20 year officer earning 7.38 hours of vacation per pay. By using the example above you would have to take 24 hours (3 days) of vacation between now and September 27th (last day of the pay period) so your vacation accrual is at or less then 360 hours on October 1st. The following is the way PeopleSoft would do the math:
Beginning vacation balance of 376 hours - 24 hours vacation used this pay period = 352 hours + 7.38 vacation hours earned for this pay period = 359.38 hours new vacation balance for pay ending September 27th.
Therefore, for the pay period starting September 28th (the pay period containing the 1st of October) you would have 359.38 hours of vacation in the system on October 1st. At the end of that pay period, if you didn't use any vacation time you would be credited 7.38 vacation hours bringing you total vacation accrual to 366.76 hours. You will now have to get that number to 360 hours or below by the pay ending date of October 25th (pay day October 31st) which is the last pay period before the pay period containing November 1st. Don't forget your accrual for that pay period. Remember, in order to get your vacation balance down to 360 hours you will have to take at least 14.14 hours of vacation, the 6.76 hours you are over the allotted 360 hours plus your accrual of 7.38 hours.
This process will need to be repeated for December and January if you go over 360 vacation hours in any of those months. After January 1, 2004 you can accrue beyond 360 vacation hours until October 1, 2004. I am told that it was written this way in the contract so officers would become aware of their vacation accrual limits far in advance of December which is the month that everybody would be taking extended vacations to get their accruals down. So the thinking was that during the month of September officers would begin to work on their vacation accruals thus avoiding massive vacation requests, denials and loss of vacation hours during the month of December.