Description
In accordance with a number of customers’ wishes, the ‘Onboard day Calculations’ tab within the crew module has been replaced by a new, more extensive ‘Work / Vacation Calculation’ tab. Along with the addition of several extra columns to detail the calculation there are 3 primary differences to the ‘Onboard day calculation tab’, these are
- It is possible to apply manual adjustments to the calculation
- Vacation earned is automatically calculated for each crew member
- It is possible to earn vacation from ‘Activities’
Manual Adjustments
Manual Adjustments are basically just the addition or subtraction of Vacation days
These can be used for a number of adjustments such as adding bonus vacation, transferring vacation from previous work or registering that vacation has been ‘Cashed in’.
When applying a manual adjustment it is mandatory to write a comment.
A new user right called ‘VacationAdjust’ has been created for the purpose of controlling if a user is allowed to add manual adjustments or not.
The Vacation Calculation
Vacation earned for each trip or work activity (please see ‘Activities’ below) is calculated based on the number or work days that has been calculated for that trip or activity.
The number of work days for a trip or activity is defined by difference between the Salary Start Date and the Salary End Date for each trip. This can however be affected by a global setting (see ‘Calendar Day setting’ below) which decides whether all the dates covered by a trip are counted as work days or if just the difference in dates is used.
From the number of work days, the Vacation Earned is calculated based on the ratio of ‘Default contract period’ to ‘Default Days on vacation’. These values can be set for each individual trip/activity (to allow for variations in contract over time), but default values can be set for each individual crew member, as well as for each individual unit within the fleet. This results in the following calculation;
Vacation Earned = Work Days * (Default Days on Vacation / Default contract period)
For example, if a seafarer has a contract that they earn 2 weeks of vacation for every 4 weeks that they work then
Default Contract Period = 28 days
Default Days on Vacation = 14 days
If the seafarer then works a trip that is calculated as 20 days;
Vacation earned = 20 * (14 / 28) = 10 Days vacation.
If neither Default days on vacation or default contract period are filled in for a trip /activity, the vacation days earned will not be calculated for that trip /activity. This is indicated by red X’s in the relevant column of the vacation calculation
Activities
It is now possible to define crew activities as either Work, Neutral or Leave. This is done in the Administration à Codes module within the ‘Crew activity’ code table.
Activities defined as ‘Work’ will be shown as part of the Work / Vacation calculation, will be counted as work days and will earn Vacation according to the contract period / vacation days ratio.
Activities defined as ‘Neutral’ will be shown as part of the Work / Vacation calculation, will be counted as work days, but will not earn Vacation
Activities defined as ‘Leave’ will not be shown as part of the Work / Vacation calculation, will not be counted as work days, and will not earn Vacation
Calendar Day Setting
Two new global system settings have been added to the System à Settings module, which have an influence on the way that the number of work days for each trip / activity is calculated.
Zoomed in:
One setting is for the trips, the other is for activities. Both have two options
- Date Difference
- Calendar days
The ‘Calendar Days’ setting will include all dates that a trip / activity is part of, whereas the ‘Date Difference’ setting will count the difference between the dates. In most cases the difference between these two calculations will be that the calendar day setting will increase the number of work days by 1 per trip / activity and subsequently decrease the number of vacation days used between trips by one (for each vacation period). For example, a crew member that does 2 trips in january - from Monday 02.01.2017 12:00 to Friday 06.01.2017 12:00 and from Monday 09.01.2017 12:00 to Friday 13.01.2017 12:00
Date Difference calculation:
Trip 1 = 4 work days (13 – 9)
Vacation days used between Trip 1 & Trip 2 = 3 days (9 - 6)
Trip 2 = 4 work days (13 – 9)
Calendar Day Calculation:
Trip 1 = 5 work days (13 – 9 + 1)
Vacation days used between Trip 1 & Trip 2 = 2 days (9 – 6 – 1)
Trip 2 = 5 work days (13 – 9 + 1)
WARNING: The overall difference between these two calculation methods will become quite large when used with crew members that perform a lot of short trips /activities.
This setting also affects how the ‘Days on board’ are calculated, adding days on board in exactly the same way.
There are a few special cases within this rule set that have been taken account of, but the only one worth mentioning is the ‘One Day Rule’. This is where a trip or activity starts and ends within the same day. This will count as 1 work day regardless of which setting is applied.
Unit Overview for Work / Vacation
A work / vacation overview for each unit has also been implemented. This overview shows the last contributing record for each crew member attached to that particular unit. From this it can be ascertained what the current work / balance is for every crew member for that unit without the need to open each crew record individually.