NOTE: This document focuses on setting up, scheduling and tracking sick time in Companion, but the same concepts can be applied to other paid time-off schedules, such as for vacation, paid leaves, etc.
An office can use non-visit schedules to represent the paid time-off. This way, Companion can manage conflicts with existing schedules, track the amount of hours used, and generate payroll for the paid time-off schedules.
Setting up your Services
First, add a Call Type/Service for Sick Time in the User Defined Information Module, if it is not there already. This call type/service should be used only for Sick Time, and should be marked as Only Payroll.
(In some systems “Call Type” may be called “Service”.)
In the Agency Office Module, edit the new Call Type/Service in the list and set the Status to “UnAvailable”. Adding schedules with this Call Type/Service indicates that the caregiver is not available during that time, and will cause the caregiver to be removed from conflicting existing schedules.
NOTE: The tool used to report the total hours used excludes “UnAvailable” Call Types/Services when reporting the total hours used by the caregiver during a period. Therefore, any Call Types/Services that should be eligible to count towards hours worked for determining the amount of sick time available to be used should not be marked as “UnAvailable”.
Also while editing the Service/Call Type, set the "Pay Credit Logic" field. This will assist in calculating the accrued and used hours later in this process.
You can built the list of credit logic options by clicking on the magnifying glass symbol at the right side of the field.
Add in a credit logic item specifically for Sick Time, and specify how the hours accrue. In the example below, sick time hours will accrue at 1 hour per 30 payable hours (from other non-"Unavailable" schedules), up to a maximum accrual of 48 hours.
Give the item an appropriate description and save it.
Now, set up a Payroll rate and a new office-level authorization for the new Call Type/Service. The hour code on the authorization should be set to No Billing, Only Payroll.
Booking the Caregiver Off Sick
When the caregiver calls in sick, the Scheduler can go to the Caregiver’s calendar and create a new non-visit schedule for the sick time to replace the Caregiver’s existing schedule(s) for that day.
Right click on the day in the calendar and click on the “New Office (Non Visit) Schedule” to easily create a new schedule for that caregiver with the “Client” marked as the office.
Set the time and hours of the schedule appropriately and select the Sick Time authorization from the list of office authorizations. Save the schedule.
If there are any existing conflicting schedules, you will be prompted to remove the caregiver from those schedules. Click Yes for the caregiver to be removed from those other schedules. (Your scheduler(s) will be able to follow up on the now open schedules in the Client calendar using either the No Caregiver calendar view, or the Scenario(s) to show Clients or schedules missing a caregiver in the Calendar or Daily Schedules Module.)
Adjusting Pay Hours Based on the Allowable Hours
Many offices will have policies or state legislation that allows caregivers to be paid up to a maximum amount per year for sick time. These policies may vary between states or offices. (For example, some jurisdictions allow one hour per 30 hours worked, up to a maximum of 24 hours (three 8-hour days) for the year.)
Companion provides a tool to report on the number of hours used by a caregiver within a certain date range. Use the tool to calculate whether all, some, or none of the scheduled sick time hours should be paid out to the caregiver when calculating payroll.
Any Sick Time schedules should be reviewed prior to calculating payroll in the Payroll Module to verify the hours used. If you calculate travel time in Companion, this should be calculated first, so that travel time records can be included in the total hours reported in the next step.
Before calculating payroll, filter the grid to show only schedules for the Sick Time Call Type/Service, to quickly review these schedules for the period.
Order the schedules in the grid by actual time and edit the schedules in chronological order.
When editing the schedule, you will see a drop down menu tool next to the caregiver field. Click on the “Show Hours Used” item under this menu to display the Pay Hours Summary screen with information on the caregiver’s hours.
This will display the Pay Hours Summary screen, which provides a summary of the Caregiver’s total payable hours (excluding Unavailable schedules) and also a summary of the Caregiver’s payable hours used on this specific authorization (even if the Authorization Call Type/Service is Unavailable).
On the Pay Hours Summary screen, always verify the date range, as all of the other numbers reported are based on this range. The date range will default from the beginning of the current year to the day before the start date of the schedule.
The Schedule Totals section shows the Caregiver’s total payable hours from all Authorizations and Schedules within the specified date range, excluding Unavailable schedules such as sick time, vacation, etc.
The Authorization Totals section shows the total payable hours for the current caregiver for the same authorization that is selected in this schedule only.
Both sections will count the total payable hours for applicable schedules, and identify how many individual schedules are present, and how many individual days that the schedules fall upon. The “Average Rate” fields will be able to calculate an average pay rate from calculated Payroll records attached to the schedules; if payroll has not yet been calculated for any of these schedules, there will be no rate to show.
NOTE: Payable Hours represents the hours that have been or will be processed into payroll. Any schedules marked as Cancelled or having an hour code that is “No Payroll” will not be included in this count.
In the example above, the caregiver has worked a total of 165 payable hours with an additional 1.25 hours of Travel Time (excluding hours for ”Unavailable” Call Types/Services, such as sick time, vacation, etc.) since the beginning of the year 2015, up to the date of the schedule. The Caregiver worked 33 individual schedules on 33 separate days and has an average rate of $10/hour in calculated payroll. The Authorization Totals section at the bottom shows that the Caregiver has already had one other previous Sick Time schedule for 4 hours paid.
If using a rule that the caregiver earns one hour of payable sick time off for every 30 hours worked, then this caregiver would currently be eligible for about five and a half hours paid sick time off. Therefore, the Pay Hours Override for this schedule should be adjusted to one hour, as the caregiver has already used 4 of those 5.5 hours. The "Hours Credit" field at bottom right on the above screen shows that 1.5 hours are eligible to be paid for this schedule.
After determining if the caregiver is eligible for any paid sick time off, you can manually adjust the Pay Hours Override to set the number of hours (or set the hour code to No Payroll if there are no remaining hours to pay for this schedule).