The accrual plan, configured
ConceptadvancedThe accrual plan and its eleven rule areas — term, eligibility, enrollment and termination, transfer and rollover, reinstatement, vesting, limits, balance updates, payments, disbursement, donation — with the term types (calendar year or anniversary year), the balance frequency sources, the carryover limit rules and the annual limit versus ceiling distinction.
What people get wrong
The confusions are the difficulty. Each one is a belief that sounds right and is not.
- That the carryover limit and the ceiling are the same thing. The ceiling caps the total balance; the carryover limit caps only what passes to the next term, and a negative balance is carried over even when the limit is 0.
- That the annual accrual limit and the ceiling are the same rule. The annual limit caps what accrues within one plan year and reduces that period’s accrual; the ceiling caps the balance overall and can reduce it further.
- That an anniversary-year term starts from the continuous service date. It starts from the hire date; the continuous service date only feeds length-of-service calculations for waiting, vesting and band matrices.
- That carryover changes apply on their own. After changing carryover configuration you must rerun Calculate Accruals and Balances with the last day of the previous term as the effective date.
Recall it
Distinguish the annual accrual limit, the ceiling and the carryover limit on an accrual plan, and state what happens at year end when the balance exceeds the carryover limit and disbursement is not selected.
The annual accrual limit caps what accrues within one plan year and reduces that period’s accrual when exceeded. The ceiling caps the total balance and can reduce the accrual further. The carryover limit (No Carryover, No Limit, Flat Amount, Include in Matrix or Formula) caps only what passes to the next term, and negative balance is carried even at limit 0. At year end the rollover is processed first, then the carryover with the leftover; a balance above both limits is paid out only if Disburse remaining balance is selected, otherwise it expires. Carryover can expire after a set time, at most 1 year unless the rule is No Limit. After changing carryover or limit configuration, rerun Calculate Accruals and Balances with the last day of the previous term as the effective date. Terms are calendar year or anniversary year anchored to the hire date — the continuous service date never moves the term start.
Memory hook: Limit caps the period, ceiling caps the balance, carryover caps the year end. Rollover first, then carryover. Negative always carries.
Rests on ABS-ACCRUAL-002, ABS-ACCRUAL-003, ABS-ACCRUAL-006, ABS-ACCRUAL-007, ABS-ACCRUAL-008, ABS-ACCRUAL-009, ABS-ACCRUAL-010, ABS-ACCRUAL-011.
Taught in
- Configuring an accrual plan: term, frequency, limits and carryoverThe eleven rule areas of an accrual plan, the two term types, the two balance frequency sources, the five carryover limit rules, and the difference between the annual accrual limit and the ceiling — using Oracle’s own vacation-plan example as the worked case.
- Who may enroll: eligibility profiles and derived factorsHow an eligibility profile decides who can enroll in an absence plan and who can schedule its absences: create derived factors first, build the profile with include/exclude criteria, and remember that absence plans accept several profiles while an absence type accepts exactly one.
- Fast formulas: the rules you write yourselfWhich absence rules accept a fast formula and which formula type each one requires — from absence type conversion and validation to accrual ceiling, carryover, entitlement and payment rates — plus how a formula is created and compiled, and how to tell a compilation error from an execution error.
- Rate definitions: what one unit of absence costsHow a rate definition prices a single unit of absence — categories (Derived Rate, Element, Value by Criteria, Grade Rate, Formula), contributors with periodicity and factors, conversion to the return periodicity, and min/max rules — which of the four absence payment rate rules reference it, and why the rate is only resolved in payroll, never in Absence Management itself.
Related
- Terminology glossary — what a term means, and what people get wrong when they use it