Who this is for: Admin, HR Admin, Manager

Set up time off and vacation for your DSP: types and policies, balances, deduction for shift-based employees, requests and approvals.

This fourth onboarding session focuses on Kenjo's Time Off module: how to create time off types and policies (for example, vacation or sick leave), how balances are calculated and deducted, how this works for Delivery Associates with variable shifts, and how your employees request time off and your Managers approve it.

Before configuring anything, it's important to distinguish between two concepts: a time off type is the general category (for example, Vacation, Sick leave, or Home office); a time off policy is the set of rules (balance, cycle, carryover, approval) that applies within that type. A time off type needs at least one policy to be usable, and you can create several policies for the same type (for example, one for full-time employees and another for part-time). Each employee, however, can only have one policy per time off type assigned.

Other terms you'll see in this session:

Legal framework in Spain: Article 38.1 of the Workers' Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores) sets the legal minimum for vacation at 30 calendar days per year (not working days), and states that this period cannot be replaced with financial compensation except when the employment relationship ends. You can offer more days, but not fewer, unless your collective bargaining agreement improves on that minimum.

Example: recording unjustified absences without generating owed hours. Some DSPs use the Justified time off type in a "rough" way to keep track of days when a Delivery Associate simply doesn't show up for work, without it being vacation or sick leave. So that these days don't generate a balance of owed hours (as would happen with unpaid time off that doesn't reduce expected time), configure this type's policy as unpaid but set to reduce the expected time for the day: this way the system doesn't count those hours as pending work or turn them into owed hours.

Once you've created the time off type, Kenjo takes you directly to the wizard to create its first policy.

Step 1 – Balance: choose whether the balance is measured in days or hours, whether the balance per cycle is fixed or unlimited, when the cycle starts (employee's hire date, January 1–December 1, or disabled), and whether accrual is monthly or granted all at once. If you choose monthly accrual, you also decide whether the balance is granted at the start or end of each period.

Practical example — first year vs. following years: it's very common for DSPs with high turnover to have two different policies for the same Vacation type: one with monthly accrual (the employee accrues entitlement month by month, for example 2.5 days/month up to 30 per year) for those with less than a year of tenure, and another with the full annual allocation granted from the start of the cycle (all 30 days at once, on January 1) for those who have already completed their first year. Reassign each employee to the appropriate policy once they reach their first year.

Step 2 – Extra balance for seniority (optional): add rules that grant additional days after a certain number of years worked. The extra days you define in each rule are always the difference compared to the previous rule, not the cumulative total.

Note: in Spain there is no legal obligation to grant extra vacation days for seniority (unlike other benefits); it's a voluntary company benefit or, in some sectors, a provision of the applicable collective bargaining agreement. Check your agreement before enabling this step.

Step 3 – Proration: decide whether the base balance is prorated by hire date, contract end date, or work schedule (part-time). By default, all of these options are set to No proration: you must explicitly enable them if you want the balance to be adjusted.

Important if you're coming from another system: to prorate by hire date, each employee needs to have their start date filled in on their Kenjo profile. If you're coming from another time-tracking system and that date wasn't imported (for example, because your source file called it "hire date" and it wasn't mapped automatically), the bulk assignment wizard won't be able to complete the proration until you fill in that date on each profile. Check this before assigning the policy to your whole workforce.

Step 4 – Balance and carryover: configure whether you allow a negative balance, whether you allow carryover of days into the next cycle (with a limit and an expiration date), whether the balance is rounded, and whether you show policy details to your employees.

Note: if you set an expiration date for carryover, expired days are automatically reset to zero and no notification is sent to the employee or the Admin when this happens.

Step 5 – Deduction rule: defines how each day of time off is deducted from the balance. See the "Configuring deduction for employees with shifts or schedules" section further below for the full detail of this rule.

Step 6 – Configuring requests: turn on whether the policy Requires approval, whether the deduction should be recalculated on approval, whether you want to block time off requests during the probation period (using the "End of probation period" field on the employee's profile), whether only Admins/HR Admins can create or edit requests, whether half days are allowed (only for day-based policies), and whether recurring time off is allowed.

Recommendation: turn on Requires approval if you want your employees to be able to see their vacation balance and request time off themselves from the mobile app. Without this step configured, the employee self-service experience isn't complete.

Go to Time Off > Settings, select the policy using the three-dot menu and click Edit. When you save, Kenjo asks you from when the change should apply: current cycle, next cycle, or a custom date. The unit (days or hours) can't be changed after the policy is created; if you need to change it, create a new policy and reassign employees.

Note: an employee can only be assigned to one policy per time off type. If they already have a policy of the same type, assigning the new one automatically replaces the previous one.

When you create a policy, Kenjo asks if you want to assign employees right away. You can also do this later from Time Off > Settings, via the policy's three-dot menu and Manage employees.

Note: you'll only see employees in the list who aren't already assigned to this policy and who don't have another policy with a different unit (days vs. hours); in that case, unassign the existing policy first.

An employee's Total entitlement in a cycle is made up of: Cycle entitlement + Adjustment + Carryover from the previous cycle + Carryover adjustment − Expired carryover days + Additional entitlement for years worked + Overtime compensation − Negative balance from the previous cycle. Available is calculated as Total entitlement − Already taken − Planned.

When the cycle changes (usually at year-end), Kenjo automatically runs these steps: resets expired carryover to zero, starts the new cycle, credits allowed carryover, carries over any negative balance, and grants the new base entitlement.

Go to Time Off > Company, click the three-dot menu next to the employee and choose Adjust balance, Adjust carryover, or Adjust days taken. All of these adjustments work as a counter-entry: they're recorded in the history and can't be edited or deleted afterward.

The Deduction rule (Step 5 of the policy wizard) determines how many hours are deducted from the balance for each day of time off. This is especially important for Delivery Associates with variable shifts in the Shiftplan.

In addition, the Use contracted hours for hourly deduction toggle changes the calculation within the "Work schedule" rule: off, the exact planned hours for that day are deducted; on, the uniform daily average of contracted hours is deducted.

Important for Delivery Associates without a published shift schedule: if an employee doesn't have a work schedule assigned and the policy uses the "Work schedule" rule, Kenjo deducts 0 hours for each day of time off, unless you turn on the "Use contracted hours for hourly deduction" toggle.

Which rule to use in Spain: for the Vacation type, Calendar days tends to be the rule most aligned with Spanish regulations, since the legal minimum of 30 days under Article 38.1 ET is defined precisely in calendar days (including weekends). For leave, sick leave, or other types that translate into hours of work not performed, Work schedule tends to be more accurate. The final decision depends on how it's defined in your collective bargaining agreement and contracts.

Public holidays in Spain: the Spanish public holiday calendar isn't a single one: it combines national holidays, regional (autonomous community) holidays, and up to two local holidays per municipality, which change every year and can differ across delivery stations if you operate in several locations. Check that your company's holiday calendar in Kenjo (General settings > Calendar) includes the correct holidays for each location; a misconfigured local holiday is a common cause of mismatches between Kenjo's required hours and your external scheduling.

If a time off request from an employee with variable shifts overlaps with the Shiftplan, keep the following in mind:

About half days: the half-day option only makes operational sense if the employee has defined shifts (for example, morning or afternoon) in the Shiftplan. If you don't yet have the shift schedule active for your Delivery Associates, a time off request will always be recorded as a full day, even if the policy allows half days.

A past request (with a date that's already passed) can't be edited or cancelled directly by the employee; they must ask an Admin or Manager to modify it. The Who's away? widget shows you at a glance which colleagues are on time off today.

In Time Off > Requests you can review and approve pending requests. An Admin or HR Admin sees all requests; a Manager only sees those of employees who "Report to" them, unless the employee's Time off approver field points to someone else (this field always takes priority over "Reports to").

You can require a second approval for certain requests, for example those longer than 5 days.

Attention: if you assign a group of people as the Level 2 approver, all members of the group receive a notification for every request, not just whoever ultimately needs to act. To avoid unnecessary notifications, assign a specific person as the final approver whenever possible.

Lets a substitute approve requests while the usual approver is away. It only activates when all three conditions are met at the same time: the Allow delegated approval option is turned on, the approver has defined a substitute in their own Delegated time off approver field, and the approver has an approved or submitted time off entry for today. The delegation is additional (it doesn't replace the original approver) and turns off automatically as soon as the approver's time off ends.

A time off restriction is a period during which employees can't request time off for the selected policies, for example to block vacation during your peak delivery season. If your plan doesn't include this feature, it will appear disabled.

While the restriction is active, if an employee tries to request time off within the blocked period, they see a red message and the submit button is disabled, both on desktop and in the mobile app.

You can disable a restriction temporarily without deleting it, or delete it permanently (the latter can't be undone).

Time off permissions are split into three blocks within Settings > Profiles and permissions > Time off, and can only be edited on custom profiles. For any permission with the Selected employees by criteria option, you can restrict the scope, for example to "Direct reports".

Important: the Access the time off page permission must be enabled for an employee before any other time off permission can take effect for them.

The Calendar > My team view shows colleagues' time off based on the My team widget settings (for example, same department and manager by default, or custom criteria such as office, team, or division). To change who sees whom in this view, adjust the widget in Settings > Home widgets > My team.

From Settings > Calendar you can turn on calendar export so your employees can sync their time off with Google, Outlook, or Apple, and decide whether time off types marked as private are shown as "Away" on exported calendars or hidden completely.

Important: If you turn off calendar export, all calendars already synced with external tools are deleted.

Your Delivery Associates can manage their time off from the Kenjo app for Android and iOS.

Once you've completed this session, we recommend reviewing the following points:

Why is a public holiday still being deducted from an employee's balance?
This happens when the policy uses Calendar days as the deduction rule: in that case every calendar day is counted, holidays included. Switch the rule to Work schedule if you don't want holidays to be deducted.

A Delivery Associate without published shifts requested time off and no hours were deducted — why?
If the employee doesn't have a work schedule assigned and the policy uses the "Work schedule" rule, Kenjo deducts 0 hours by default. Turn on the Use contracted hours for hourly deduction toggle on the policy if you want the average of their contracted hours to be deducted.

Can an employee be assigned several policies of the same time off type?
No. An employee can only be assigned one policy per time off type. If you assign them a new policy of the same type, it automatically replaces the previous one.

A group of people is getting a lot of time off approval notifications that aren't relevant to them — how do I avoid this?
Check whether you've assigned a group as the Level 2 approver in two-step approval: all of its members get a notification for every request. Replace it with a specific person to avoid unnecessary notifications.

What happens if carryover days expire without anyone reviewing them?
If you set an expiration date for carryover, Kenjo automatically resets the carryover to zero once that date arrives and doesn't send any notification to either the employee or the Admin. Review balances ahead of time if you need to avoid losing days.

Can we use Kenjo to manage sick leave and its reimbursement (Krankengeld) in Germany?
Yes, but avoid the Calendar days deduction rule for this time off type: since it also counts weekends and public holidays, it can produce figures that are inconsistent with the official Krankengeld calculation. Use Work schedule for a more accurate calculation.