Set Up Holidays and Paid Time Off

Factor offers two distinct features for managing time away from work: Holidays and Paid Time Off (PTO). While they both relate to non-working time, they serve different purposes and are configured differently in the system:

Holidays are firm-wide dates—like New Year’s Day or Independence Day—that you can add to your company calendar. For employees who are eligible (defined in their user settings), Factor can automatically log 8 hours of paid holiday time on their timesheets for those dates.
Paid Time Off (PTO) refers to time employees take off individually—such as vacation, sick leave, family leave, or floating holidays. PTO types can be configured as either:
- Accruing – where employees earn time off at a defined pace (e.g., 2 hours per week), with optional rules around minimum hours worked to qualify.
- Non-accruing (Allowance-based) – where a fixed number of hours is granted upfront for each employee annually.

NOTE: These two features can work together—for example, holidays can still be shown visually on the timesheet even if the paid hours come from a PTO type like “Partial Holiday.” This flexibility helps you tailor time tracking and pay policies to match how your firm operates.

This guide walks through how to:

Add and configure holidays for your firm
Set up PTO types and their accrual rules
Assign PTO allowances to employees
Monitor balances and see how PTO shows up across the system

Setting Up Holidays

Where to Manage Holidays

To manage holidays, go to Settings > List Tab. If you don’t see this tab, you’ll need elevated permissions from your office administrator.

Scroll to the Holidays section to view or add holidays.

Adding a Holiday

Click Add and use the date picker to select a holiday (e.g., January 1, 2024). Once a holiday is added for a specific year, that year becomes available in the drop-down for future edits.

How Holidays Work

Display on Timecards: Holidays appear visually distinct on employee timesheets.
Auto-Logged Hours: If enabled, Factor will automatically log 8 hours of holiday time on eligible employees’ timesheets.

To control who receives holiday pay:

Go to Settings > Your Team
Edit the employee profile and set Receives Holiday Pay to “Yes” or “No”

For Partial Holidays or Special Cases

Use Custom PTO Types instead of holidays for things like:

Floating holidays
Partial (e.g., 4-hour) holidays
Holidays only some employees receive

You can still add these days to the holiday calendar for visibility, but use PTO types to allocate hours and track usage.

Creating Custom PTO Types

Go to Settings > List Tab > PTO Types to create and manage custom PTO categories.

Examples might include:

Vacation (accruing)
Sick Time (non-accruing)
Family Leave
Partial Holiday

Click any PTO type to:

Rename it
Set accrual behavior
Define whether it’s exceedable
Add minimum logged hours required to accrue

Accrual Options

For accruing PTO types, you can choose:

Weekly
Monthly
Bi-Monthly

Set how much time an employee accrues during each period later when assigning individual allowances.

Minimum Hours to Accrue

Set a minimum number of timesheet hours required to earn PTO in that period (e.g., 8 hours/week). This helps enforce policies around leave eligibility and ensures new hires don’t accrue time before logging hours.

Exceedable PTO

Non-accruing types: If set to No, employees can’t use more than their allowance.
Accruing types: If set to No, Factor still allows logging PTO in advance (e.g., future vacation) up to the yearly total.
Only set to Yes if you allow usage beyond the annual accrued amount.

Setting PTO Allowances for Employees

Go to Set Employee Allowances from the PTO Types section to assign carryover and new balances.

View by Year and Filter

Choose the year (e.g., 2024)
Filter by employee type (salary, hourly, etc.)
Focus on employees missing allowances

Set Balance / Accrual Rate per PTO Type:

Carryover: Enter unused hours from the previous year
Allowance / Accrual Rate:
1. For non-accruing / allowance PTO: Enter the yearly total allowance
2. For accruing PTO: Enter the number of hours earned per period (e.g., 2 hours per week)

Example:

For an employee named Michael:

Vacation: 2 hours/week (accruing)
Sick: 40 hours/year (non-accruing)
Family Leave: 16 hours/year
Partial Holiday: 0 hours (not used for this employee)

Viewing Balances

Allowance History

Click Allowance History to:

View current year’s usage and remaining balance
View carryover from past years
Inform how much to carryover for the current year

Example: Michael has 1 hour of vacation left from 2023, so enter “1” in the carryover column for 2024.

PTO Visibility for Time Entry

Employees see their PTO balance when logging time
Factor will show warnings if they try to exceed accrued time
The balance updates in real time once PTO is logged

PTO Visibility for Managers

The Paid Time Off Requests page under TIME: Lists PTO logged or scheduled for a date range by employee (view-only; no approval process).
On the Resource Schedule: Displays PTO as part of each employee’s availability (e.g., “Vacation – 8 hours”).

Summary

Feature	Details
Holidays	Define visible holidays per year; optionally auto-log 8 hours for eligible staff
Custom PTO Types	Define accruing or non-accruing categories like vacation or sick time
Accrual / Allowance Settings	Choose allowance to manually specify a balance for the year, or set the pace of accrual (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly), and set minimum logged hours to accrue (if accruing), and whether the user can exceed the allowance or accrued amount
Allowance Setup	Specify the carryover hours for each type by person and year, as well as the specific allowance, or the amount to accrual at the pace selected

If you have questions or need help configuring PTO or holidays, contact us at help@factorapp.com, use the in-app chat, or reach out to your Factor product specialist.