Credit back a leave day when the employee worked that day

Opt in to the Leave Worked Day Credit Back policy to refund a leave day automatically when the employee clocks in and renders the required paid hours on a date their approved leave covered. One row per leave and date pair — attendance recomputes never double-credit.

By OneHRIS Published October 28, 2026 Last checked October 28, 2026

Available on Enterprise

When to use this

Use the Credit Back policy when your tenant policy says: if the employee worked the day their leave covered, we return the credit. This is common for leaves filed as a range (Fri–Mon) when the employee ends up coming in on the Monday because the incident resolved.

The alternative — manual balance adjustments — is slow and error-prone. The automated version is auditable: each credit-back lands a row in Leave Application Adjustments with the paid hours rendered and the policy rule that authorised the refund.

Create the policy

Go to Settings → Policies → Policy Rules and select New rule.

  1. Policy type: choose Leave Worked Day Credit Back from the picker.
  2. Rule name: describe the policy, for example Credit back SL when 8 paid hours rendered.
  3. Minimum paid hours to reclaim: enter the paid-hours threshold. Setting 8 means a one-day leave is refunded only when the employee actually rendered a full day.
  4. Covered leave types: list the leave codes the refund applies to (SL, VL). Leave empty to cover every paid leave.
  5. Match criteria: target the policy to a subset of staff by Job Level, Policy Group or Department. Leave empty to apply to every employee.
  6. Active immediately: keep ticked.
  7. Select Save rule.

How a refund lands

Below is the chain of events on a typical day:

  1. Employee files sick leave for Mon–Wed (3 days). Status becomes Approved; balance moves 3 days from Available to Used.
  2. On Wednesday the employee feels better and clocks in. They work 9:00 AM to 6:30 PM — 8.5 paid hours after the one-hour unpaid break.
  3. On clock-out, the credit-back service checks: is Wednesday covered by an approved paid leave of a matching leave type? Yes. Did the employee render at least the threshold? Yes.
  4. The service writes one Leave Application Adjustment row (Wednesday, 1 day, 8.5 paid hours, policy rule ID) inside a transaction. The leave's TotalDays drops from 3 to 2. The LeaveBalance.Used drops by 1, Available rises by 1.
  5. The employee sees a confirmation: Clocked out. Total hours: 8.50. Leave credit returned (1 day) — you worked a day your approved leave covered.

What is not credited back

  • Days where paid hours were under the threshold.
  • Leaves marked Unpaid (they never debited credit).
  • Half-day leaves.
  • Leave types not listed in the policy.
  • The same (leave, date) pair twice — idempotency is enforced at the database layer.

Audit trail

Every adjustment is a row in Leave Application Adjustments. The row carries:

  • The leave application and the exact attendance date.
  • Days adjusted (always 1 in this release) and paid hours rendered at adjustment time.
  • The policy rule ID that fired the refund.
  • The timestamp and the user context the refund ran under.

The row survives even if the leave application is later soft-deleted, so you can reconstruct historical balance changes during a dispute.

Questions people ask

What happens without this policy?

Nothing. If the employee works through an approved leave, the day stays debited from their balance. HR has to adjust it by hand. This policy makes the refund automatic.

When does the refund fire?

On clock-out, after the attendance record saves and the total paid hours are known. If the paid hours meet the threshold and the leave type matches the policy, one leave day is refunded for that date.

Is it safe to recompute attendance?

Yes. The refund is idempotent — there is one adjustment row per leave and date pair, enforced by a unique database index. Recomputes return the existing row without touching the balance again.

What leave types are covered?

Whatever you list in the policy. An empty list matches every paid leave. Specify leave codes (SL, VL) when you want sick leave refundable but not vacation leave, for example.

Does it apply to half-day leaves?

Not in this release. Half-day leaves are deliberately out of scope — the refund math for partial-shift work is a separate conversation. Unpaid leaves are also skipped because they never debited credit in the first place.

Which attendance paths trigger it?

Clock-out from the employee portal. ManualEntry, UploadDTR, AttendanceRecalculation and other paths do not yet trigger it — a follow-up adds those once the Clock-out path is validated by tenants.

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