The laws governing time credits #
The legal provisions are set out in the Swiss Code of Obligations (OR).
- Duration: At least 4 vacation weeks. At least 5 weeks of vacation until the employee reaches the age of 20. – Art. 329a paragraph 1
- If an employee joins or leaves the company during the year, the vacation entitlement is calculated over the duration of the employment relationship. – Art. 329a paragraph 3
- Two consecutive weeks of vacation must be taken. – Art. 329c paragraph 1
- The employer determines the date of the vacation, but takes the employee’s wishes into consideration. – Art. 329c paragraph 2
- Vacation may not be paid out during employment. – Art. 329d paragraph 2
- Vacation does not expire at the end of the year. The vacation entitlement only expires after 5 years. – Art. 128 para. 3
Further laws concerning vacation (e.g. reductions) can be found in the OR.
Two options for storing time entitlements in the system #
- Automatic entitlement regulation
- Manually entered claims
We recommend that you always work with the automatic claims . Only corrections should be entered manually .
As the name suggests, automatic claims are calculated by the system itself. The entitlements are activated in the employee’s time recording.
The automatic entitlements are also displayed in the list of entitlements:
Deposit automatic claims #
To store the annual entitlement templates, open x2: Time recording → Settings (tools icon top right) → Time credit tab → Switch to version x3; x3: Time recording → Advanced menu / three-point menu → Master data → Recurring time entitlements (leave entitlements) section.
- Designation: e.g. entitlement 4 weeks / entitlement 25 days
- Balance type: Vacation for vacation entitlement
- Value in hours (vacation days * 100% length of working day)
- Cycle: annually for vacation entitlement
The entitlements are created for 100% employment and automatically reduced accordingly for part-time work (the “Automatic adjustment to degree of employment” checkbox must be activated for this – in the opposite case, the value is adopted as fixed, regardless of the degree of employment).
If you join or leave the company during the year, the automatic entitlement is reduced by the system according to the duration of the employment relationship.
IMPORTANT! Created annual vacation entitlements cannot be deleted! Changes to entitlements are only possible if they are not (yet) assigned to any employees, otherwise this can lead to errors in the vacation recording!
Activate / assign automatic vacation entitlements #
For new employee profiles, the entitlement must be selected when setting the data entry profile. The calculated entitlement is automatically created according to the employment relationship.
For existing employee profiles, the auto-entitlement can be activated by creating a new entry profile. Click on Plus, set the from date, enter all previous data and then select the entitlement from those stored and click on Save.
The calculated entitlement then appears under time balances. From now on, only corrections need to be made.
Manual claims and corrections #
Manual claims can be entered directly into the list
When making a correction, the date, the wage type group vacation/hour balance and the hourly value must be specified.
Paid overtime can be entered as an hourly balance correction: the value is entered with a minus sign and the hours entered on this date are deducted from the hours account. This write-off can be noted in the comments: Overtime paid / Date.
Reduction in entitlement on departure #
More about employee resignation: Employee resignation
If automatic leave entitlement calculation is active for the person, 0.00 is displayed in the Reduction field on leaving.
If manual entitlement entries were recorded in the current year, these are automatically reduced on leaving the company.
Overview table of entitlement/correction entries #
If manual entitlements and corrections are made en masse, the overview can be used, which can be found under Time recording → Advanced menu / Three-point menu → Settings → Time credit tab → Personal entitlements selection.
Here you can see all entries that can be added (below the list via the plus symbol), mutated or deleted.
After making the changes, click on Save .
Calculation method: #
The law always refers to vacation weeks. How many vacation days such a week corresponds to depends on the employment relationship, or more precisely the number of working days per working week.
EXAMPLE
Let’s take a company with 4 vacation weeks per year as an example. An employee who works 5 days a week all year round is entitled to 4 vacation weeks * 5 working days/week = 20 vacation days
If an employee joins or leaves the company during the year, the vacation entitlement must be calculated accordingly in accordance with the Swiss law on the duration of employment. The law leaves open how exactly the calculation should take place. In practice, there are 2 types:
- Commercial: Each month is treated the same for simplification (30 days). The year has 360 days.
- Exact: The duration of the employment relationship in days is counted exactly and compared with the total days of the year.
ems only uses the exact method for the calculation (since 2021)
In concrete terms, the vacation entitlement would be 275 days (01.04 to and including 31.12) / 365
In the yellow marked area you will find the calculation (365 of 365 days calculated in 2023).