Create allowance for absence requests in the web

Create allowances to use for automatic approval of absence requests. This is useful for periods that are not scheduled and where decisions to approve or deny cannot be based on the staffing situation. The allowances can also be used as a basis for manual decisions.

The allowances are often based on a staffing budget where the allowance for each day is calculated based on the available resources and the forecasted need. If you already know how much your allowance for each day is, you can enter the allowance manually in the budget groups in the web. To base your budget allowance on the staffing budget, go to the WFM client. For more information, refer to Create a staffing budget and How creating staffing budgets works.

NOTE Only absences which are marked as Is contract time and connected to a shrinkage in the budget will deduct from the budget allowance for agent absence requests.

Preparations

There are a few things to prepare before you start to create the staffing budget, to make it as accurate as possible.

Create a budget group and add the skills that you are creating a staffing budget for. Skills that share resources should belong to the same budget group. Avoid using the same skill in more than one budget group.

Create a budget

Refer to the Procedures section for detailed information on how to create a budget. Go through the steps once and then go back to adjust the values if needed.

Prerequisites

You have the Requests permission.

Page location

WFM > Requests > Budget groups

Procedures

Budget groups

Create a new budget group

Group skills in a budget group to create a staffing budget for those skills. Place skills that share resources in the same budget group. Resources are shared between two skills when there are agents that have both skills. If an agent gets an absence request approved, the staffing level of all skills within the budget group will be affected, directly or indirectly.

NOTE Do not include the same skill in more than one budget group. If you do, the agents who belong to this budget group will be counted twice when creating staffing budgets.

Click Add budget group.
Enter a Name.
Select a Calendar type.
Select a Time zone for the budget group skills. This time zone is used when loading forecasted hours for the skills.
Select the Skills that you want to associate with the budget group.
Click Save. If you want to edit any of these details, on the budget group landing page, click Properties for a budget group on the left-hand pane, edit the details, and click Save.

Allowances

Open budget

Open a budget and the period to set up allowances for.

On the budget group landing page, click a budget group in the left-hand pane.
Select a date period and click Open.
Select the Month, Week, or Day tab.

Click Day view to work on day level.
Enter the FTE h/day for the full period. FTE stands for Full-Time Equivalent and FTE h/day is the average number of hours per day for a full-time contract. This value is defined in decimal form. To set it to 7 hours and 30 minutes, enter 7.50.
To add shrinkage, click the plus icon, enter a Name, select or clear the Include in request allowance check box and click Add. The shrinkage is required for absences to deduct from the override allotments. Only those absences included in the request allowance for the shrinkage will count towards the override value. Once shrinkage is added, no percentage needs to be configured; only the absences need to be connected.
Enter the total allowance for each day in the Override field. This is a head count for FTEs that can be approved for a day off.
Click Save. If you want to discard the changes, click Discard. If you want to delete the budget group, click Delete and then click Delete again to confirm.

The following table provides an overview of the terminology that you might encounter when working with staffing budgets.

Term	Description
FTE h/day	FTE stands for Full-Time Equivalent, and FTE h/day is the average number of hours per day for a full-time contract. This value is defined in decimal form. EXAMPLE For example, to set this value to 7 hours and 30 minutes, enter 7.5. It is recommended that you only enter the contract time. For example, if agents are scheduled for 8 hours but have a 30 minute lunch that is not part of their contract, enter 7.5. NOTE If there is a mix of agents who work various contract lengths, you must pick the average contract length or pick the length that most agents work.
Shrinkage	If you add shrinkage, you add information about the percentage of agents who will not work. You can add multiple shrinkage rows. For example, you can add one row for planned absenteeism and another row for unplanned absenteeism. Select the Include in request allowance check box to connect the shrinkage to one or more absence types. This is useful to follow up on the usage of these absence types, automatically or manually. After adding the shrinkage, enter the percentage for each of the shrinkages added.
Override	This provides the ability to define the number of FTEs that you want to grant time off to if you use the Budget as a staffing check. This overwrites the value that is output by the budgets based on the calculation with the above inputs.

Term

Description

FTE h/day

FTE stands for Full-Time Equivalent, and FTE h/day is the average number of hours per day for a full-time contract. This value is defined in decimal form.

EXAMPLE For example, to set this value to 7 hours and 30 minutes, enter 7.5. It is recommended that you only enter the contract time. For example, if agents are scheduled for 8 hours but have a 30 minute lunch that is not part of their contract, enter 7.5.

NOTE If there is a mix of agents who work various contract lengths, you must pick the average contract length or pick the length that most agents work.

Shrinkage

If you add shrinkage, you add information about the percentage of agents who will not work. You can add multiple shrinkage rows. For example, you can add one row for planned absenteeism and another row for unplanned absenteeism. Select the Include in request allowance check box to connect the shrinkage to one or more absence types. This is useful to follow up on the usage of these absence types, automatically or manually. After adding the shrinkage, enter the percentage for each of the shrinkages added.

Override

This provides the ability to define the number of FTEs that you want to grant time off to if you use the Budget as a staffing check. This overwrites the value that is output by the budgets based on the calculation with the above inputs.