⚙️ How do I set up ATK/ATF agreements in HRM Payroll?

ATK/ATF – Agreement

The first building block for setting up ATK/ATF is to create an agreement that defines the basic rules according to your collective agreement. You can create several different agreements if you have different groups of employees covered by different rules. The settings for the agreements can be found under Administration > Settings > ATK/ATF agreements.

It may also be the case that you instead need a customised solution using time transactions, pay codes, and accumulators (for example, agreements where accrual and withdrawal coincide can not use the function for ATK/ATF agreements as these only calculate deferred accrual.)

The General tab General

• Name
  Name your agreement so it is easy to understand whom it applies to.
• Description
  Here you can provide a detailed description of the agreement.
• The agreement is active
  If you deactivate an agreement, it will no longer be possible to select this agreement in the employee register or for personnel categories. If there are employees or personnel categories already using this agreement, they will continue to have it until you replace it with another. You can therefore deactivate an agreement that you do not want to be used, as well as agreements that you wish to phase out.
• Type of agreement
  Here you specify whether the agreement is of the type Working time account (ATK) or Shortening of working hours (ATF). See the first section of this instruction for more information.
• Begin accruing annual leave year
  Currently, it is only possible to select the previous year as the begin accruing annual leave year. This means that employees first accrue ATK/ATF during a 12-month period, and can then begin to take out their accrued money/hours. If you have a collective agreement with ATF where accrual and withdrawal are to take place on an ongoing basis, you can handle this in Flex HRM Time. See the first section of this instruction for more information.
• Start date for earnings
  Here you specify the month and day when accrual begins. The most common start dates are 1 January or 1 April. Please note that accrual is based on the cash principle. For example, if the accrual period begins on 1 January, ATK/ATF accrued in the payroll run paid out in January will be included, even if the wage and worked time refer to December of the previous year.
• Start date for withdrawals
  Here you specify the month and day when employees with withdrawals as paid free time can start taking their leave.
• Provision in% (ATK)
  If the agreement is of the ATK type, specify here what percentage of the wage basis is to be allocated to the working time account.
• Provision min/week
  If the agreement is of the ATF type, specify here how many minutes per week a full-time employee accrues to the balance for shortening of working hours. Some collective agreements state how many hours per year a full-time employee should accrue. In that case, you need to convert these hours to the corresponding number of minutes per week. The advantage of working with minutes per week is that you can handle full-time, part-time, long-term absent, and those who have not been employed for the whole year in the same way. See the section for Ongoing accrual – ATF for more information.
• Rounding policy for hours (whole year)
  For agreements of type ATF, this is used to round off the accrued hours when a whole accrual year is completed and moved to the selected period when you run the routine to start a new accrual period. For agreements of type ATK, this is used to round the calculated hours at withdrawal as paid free time.
  
  You can select rounding, decrease, or increase. In the box on the right, specify the degree of accuracy. If you enter “1.00”, rounding will be to the nearest whole hour. If you enter “0.50”, rounding will be to the nearest half hour. The same principle applies to increase and decrease.

Threshold for hours depending on full-time work measure
Here you specify the upper limit for the number of hours. For ATF, this means a roof for accrual that cannot be exceeded. For ATK, it means a roof when calculating hours. If you apply the agreement to different groups of employees with different full-time work measures, you can set different limits in the list.

 

Employee’s choice tab

• Selectable withdrawal variants
  Tick one or more of the types of withdrawal that the employee can choose according to your collective agreement. If the collective agreement allows no room for choice, specify the option that applies. The employee will then automatically have this option selected.
  
  For pension provision, you can also specify the age range for which this option is available. It is common that employees over 65 are not allowed to choose extra pension provision, and in some agreements, young employees are also excluded from this option.
• Allow allocation of choice between several withdrawal variants (% allocation)
  The most common setup is that employees take out all of their accrual in the same way. The type of withdrawal is then chosen via a drop-down list as follows:
  
  However, in some agreements, employees can choose to allocate their withdrawal. The type of withdrawal is then chosen by specifying how much should be taken out per type. In the example below, the employee has chosen to take out half as paid compensation and half as paid free time.
• Deadline for choice
  Here you specify when the employee must have made their choice no later than. This should be a date before the start of the withdrawal period but absolutely no later than before the routine is run to implement the choices and start a new withdrawal period.
• Default option if the employee does not make a choice
  Here you can specify what should happen if an employee does not make a choice on time. This can also be used where the collective agreement does not provide an option, in order to avoid having to administer a choice for all employees.
• Carry over remaining leave less than this number of hours to the next withdrawal period
  Some agreements allow you to carry over untaken leave to the next withdrawal period. This most often concerns time less than a workday. Specify here the maximum number of hours that may be carried over to the following year (usually the equivalent of one workday). If an employee at the end of a withdrawal period has fewer leave hours remaining, these will automatically transfer to the new withdrawal period. If more hours remain, the remainder will transfer to the next withdrawal period. For example, if you set a threshold of 8 hours, and 10 hours remain, 8 hours will be paid out at the changeover, and 2 hours will be carried over to the next withdrawal period.
  
  A condition for hours to be carried over is that the employee has selected leave for the next withdrawal period as well. Otherwise, all hours will be paid out at the changeover. For part-time employment, the threshold is reduced in accordance with the employment rate at the start of the withdrawal period.
• Do not pay out money/hours remaining below
  In some situations, a very small remainder can be left in the ATK/ATF balance, which may seem odd to pay out to the employee at the end of the withdrawal period. This is often just a few pennies left over because the price per hour does not divide out evenly due to rounding of pence. You can use this new setting to enter a threshold for when a payment should be made.
  

Debt management tab

This is only used for agreements of type ATF. Here, specify the formula for calculating the price per hour to be used for debt calculation/payment of final salary of ATF hours.

Assign standard ATK/ATF agreement to Personnel category

Under Settings – Personnel categories you can specify the ATK/ATF agreement to apply to all employees in the personnel category.

Checklist for set-up

Below we describe the sequence you should follow to set up and get started with ATK/ATF for the first time.

1. Set up agreements
   Start by setting up the agreements in the system. See the section Settings – ATK/ATF agreements.
2. Standard agreement by personnel category
   If employees are divided into different personnel categories where everyone in a certain category should have a specific ATK/ATF agreement, you should add a standard agreement there. If you cannot use this method, you must enter the agreement manually for each employee.
3. Pay codes for withdrawal and final salary
   Review and check that all pay codes for ATK/ATF exist. See the section Settings – Pay codes for ATK/ATF.
4. System fixed pay codes
   Enter system fixed pay codes as described in the section Settings – System fixed pay codes.
5. Pay codes for accrual
   Go through all pay codes to be used as the basis for accrual of ATK/ATF. See the section under Ongoing handling – Ongoing accrual ATK/ATF.
6. Initiate and import balances for the employees
   It is now time to initiate and import balances for the employees. See the section Initiate and import balances below.
7. Settings to show balances on the payslip
   If you want to show balances on the payslip, follow the settings in the section Settings – Show ATK/ATF balances on the payslip.
8. Settings for exporting balances to HRM Time
   If you use HRM Time, you should export balances there according to the section Settings – Export ATK/ATF balances to HRM Time.
9. Reminder for the employee’s choice
   If you want to use reminders for the employee’s choice, configure that now according to the section Settings – Reminder for the employee’s choice.
10. Accounting of ATK/ATF debt
    Start by entering accounting accounts for ATK/ATF debt as described in the section Settings – Accounting of ATK/ATF debt. You then perform the first debt calculation according to the instructions under Accounting of ATK/ATF debt. It is important that you make the debt calculation on a payroll run with updated balances for ATK/ATF.
11. Activate authorisations for employees
    If employees are to make their choices on the front page in HRM, they need authorisations for the ATK/ATF panel.

Initiate and import balances

The first time you have entered a standard agreement for a personnel category, all employees in that category will receive this agreement, but without balances being initiated. On the ATK/ATF tab in the employee register you will not see any balances, only a button to Initiate ATK/ATF year. When you click the button, the system will create relevant balances for accrual period, withdrawal period, and, if applicable, selection period based on today’s date, each employee’s employment periods, and ATK/ATF agreement.

Example A:
An employee has an agreement where accrual starts on 1 January and the withdrawal period is 1 April. Today’s date is 26 January 2022. When initiating, a new accrual period will be created with accrual starting 1 January 2022. A withdrawal period will also be created for 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022 (which was accrued between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020). In addition, a selection period will be created for the accrual period 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021.

Example B:
An employee has an agreement where accrual starts on 1 January and the withdrawal period is 1 April. Today’s date is 15 May 2022. When initiating, a new accrual period will be created with accrual starting 1 January 2022. A withdrawal period will be created for 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023 (which was accrued between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2021). No selection period will be created.

The same logic for initiation applies when you import balances for the employees. When importing balances, initiation will be performed first if necessary, and then balances will be imported. This logic is intended to be used when starting to use ATK/ATF.

You import balances using import templates that you create under Administration – Settings – Import templates. Here, use the import type Employees/users. There are a number of fields here that you can use to import balances for ATK/ATF.

When importing, it is important to consider which accrual period, withdrawal period, and, if applicable, selection period will be initiated depending on the date of import. If the accrual period starts on 1 January, there will be a different initiation if you run the import on 31 December compared to 1 January. It is therefore a good idea to first import for one employee and see what happens.

Good to keep in mind when importing balances.

• Balances for current qualifying year
  When importing balances for the current qualifying year, you need to act differently depending on whether you have a preliminary payroll run or not. For example, if the accrual period starts on 1 January, and there is currently no preliminary payroll run (it does not matter if there are settled payroll runs or not). If the first payroll run to be created after the import concerns pay for payment in May, you should import the earned value for the period January – April. Note that it is the earned value, not the specification for accrual.
• Balance for the withdrawal period
  Here, you can choose to import only the remaining balance or to import both ingoing and remaining balances (if you want to include all information).
• Choice of withdrawal
  You should always import the choice of withdrawal for the withdrawal period. Usually, this is Paid free time for employees who still have hours/money to withdraw. In the file, enter 1 for paid compensation, 2 for paid free time, and 3 for pension provision. If needed, you can also import choice of withdrawal for the selection period. This applies if employees made their choice in the old payroll system before starting with Flex HRM Payroll.

Manual change of ATK/ATF periods

Sometimes it can happen that an employee is placed in the wrong period for accrual and withdrawal. Therefore, we have built in the possibility to manually change the period for an employee. Please note that this function should not be confused with the annual routines and should only be used in exceptional cases. If you are unsure, check what applies in your particular case.

The function to change ATK/ATF period can be found on the ATK/ATF tab in the employee register. Click the button Historical data, and then Change ATK/ATF period.

A dialogue will appear where in the column From year you will see which ATK/ATF is currently the accrual period, selection period and withdrawal period. In the column To year you can change which year is the accrual period and withdrawal period. In the example below, we have an employee with an accrual period 2022 and an active selection period for accrual starting in 2021. If we want to change it to withdrawal period, we can change the withdrawal period marked in red to 2021. Please note that no balances are changed, so you must manually correct them after changing the periods using this routine.