Author: Ivan Ivanov
Vacation time reflected in the time sheet does not always require the same means of designation. The procedure for recording an employee’s extraordinary unpaid leave depends on the grounds for providing it. The Labor Code of the Russian Federation defines the general rules for maintaining the documentation in question when displaying the temporary absence of an employee, as well as exceptional cases of providing this period of time.
The personnel department of an organization or enterprise is required to keep records of employees’ working hours (Article 91 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). For this purpose, report card forms are officially established - T-12 and T-13. You can use any of the specified documents. The time sheet document allows you to reflect the number of working days, weekends, holidays, sick leave and vacation days per month for each employee.
To reflect the time of absence of an employee that does not imply the maintenance of wages, either digital or letter assignment of information is determined. The accounting documentation does not imply that one option or another is mandatory. The HR department independently determines the procedure for maintaining the accounting documentation in question.
Specific designations are also provided for individual practical situations, which include the following:
- Situations in which, by law, the employer is obliged to provide unpaid leave, even if he does not approve of such a decision (Article 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). In such a situation, rest time can be reflected using the letter o or the digital indicator - 17.
- Situations in which the employer does not oppose the provision of unpaid leave. Different notations are used here. In alphabetic format - “DO”, in digital format - 16.
If the personnel officer has chosen a specific designation option, then in the future it can be changed only when drawing up a new document for the next month.
Separately, it should be said about additional leaves that do not imply payment, and a person’s refusal to increase wages and replace it with a vacation period. The first case will also apply a separate symbol, namely “DB”. In a situation where wages are replaced by vacation, this fact is also necessarily noted with a report card - “NV”.
Decoding the "OZH" code
We often receive questions about what “coolant” means on the report card and whether it is possible to use your own codes in the report card.
According to Order of the Ministry of Finance No. 52n dated March 30, 2015, the company has the right to supplement the adopted abbreviations with its own codes. To do this, it is necessary to adopt a local regulatory act, which indicates the accepted abbreviations and gives a decoding of the established designations.
The code “OZH” in the work time sheet indicates the period of time for caring for a child up to 3 years old. Now more about this.
In a situation where an employee quits the day after leaving maternity leave, the last day of “work” (or rather vacation) is also noted on the report card as “OJ”.
Resolving the issue of granting an employee leave without pay
Leave without pay can be granted to an employee upon his written application only in the presence of family circumstances or other valid reasons (Part 1 of Article 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation).
Vacations without pay, provided for in Part 1 of Art. 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, are provided at the discretion of the employer (i.e. the employer has the right to refuse to provide such leave). In some cases, the employer is obliged to provide the employee with leave without pay (Part 2 of Article 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation).
During the period of leave without pay, the employee retains his place of work (position).
It must be taken into account that the employer does not have the right, on his own initiative, to send an employee on leave without pay, for example, in the event of a decrease in production volumes or financial difficulties. The so-called “administrative leave” is not provided for by labor legislation.
Who keeps the time sheet?
The work time sheet is kept by a person appointed by order or directive of the manager, responsible for keeping time records for the company as a whole or for a separate structural unit or branch. Such employees are called “timekeepers”.
The timekeeper must record the attendance or absence of employees based on personnel orders. If the timekeeper sees that an employee is absent from work today, he must raise orders. If an order for parental leave has been issued for an absent employee, the report card must indicate: “OZH” or “15”.
The last day of parental leave is the day when the employee’s child turns 1.5 or 3 years old, respectively. If an employee returns from vacation, there is no need to write a statement. The application is only required if the employee returns from vacation early.
Reflection of the period without pay in hours
According to Art. 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the time allotted to an employee for vacation without pay is reflected in calendar days. That is, the time sheet must include the daily leave or “ZO”) of such leave, as well as the total number of days the person is absent from the place of work.
In practice, there are cases when a person is absent from work for only a certain number of hours, even if this happens for one day. Such situations also require proper reflection of information in a timesheet, since time tracking is necessary for further calculation of wages.
In order for HR officers to avoid mistakes when drawing up timesheets, it is necessary to take into account the following nuances:
- Reflection of working hours. If the employee spent only a few hours at the place of work, then the time sheet must reflect this fact by affixing the letter “I” or the digital designation - 01. The exact number of hours worked is indicated under this mark.
- Entering data on unpaid leave. The timesheet requires a separate column, which shows the total number of not only days, but also hours spent on unplanned rest.
Accordingly, if in one day an employee both performed labor functions and used unpaid rest hours, then the main line of the timesheet includes only working hours, and an additional column includes information about vacation.
Correctly filling out the timesheet is necessary so that there are no problems during inspections, since such an accounting document reflects the number of employees and the time they worked, which makes it possible to determine the proper amount of wages. Such inspections can be carried out not only by the Labor Inspectorate and the tax authority, but also by the prosecutor's office.
Filling out a timesheet when an employee is on maternity leave
If an employee works part-time and is caring for a child, we recommend the following.
The letter code “I” or the numeric “01” designate the days of work, and “OJ” and “15”, respectively, the time for child care. Under the line with the codes in the timesheet, you must enter the working time.
We also recommend indicating the time for feeding the child on the timesheet. Breaks to feed the child are included in working hours and paid for (Part 4 of Article 91, Part 4 of Article 258 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). There are no approved codes for such breaks. Therefore, you can approve yours if necessary.
Part-time working hours are established for an employee only if he asked for it in the application.
Vacation at your own expense during sick leave
Practice knows examples in which a person, while on vacation, regardless of whether it is paid or not, is forced to issue a certificate of temporary incapacity for work while on vacation. Here, what is essential for reflecting information in the timesheet is which option of the vacation period is being implemented.
According to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, when applying for sick leave during the period of unpaid leave, the person is not given the opportunity to extend or postpone the vacation. That is, illness will be included during absence without accrual of wages. Accordingly, the sick period does not imply separate options for designating days; o and “BEFORE”, either 17 or 16 will be used.
In such situations, it is better to wait until the end of the vacation period, which does not provide for retention of salary, and only then apply for sick leave. This will allow you to receive payment for days of temporary disability, albeit at the average wage. The right to such a payment is established directly by Article 183 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.
Separately, it should be noted cases of granting compulsory leave, which involve options for implementing sick leave and designating a period of incapacity other than unpaid rest:
- if the sick leave requires payment from the employer, then even when it intersects with the paid vacation period, the time of illness is indicated in the report card with the letter “B” or the digital indicator “19”;
- if temporary disability is realized without accrual of payments, then the accounting document must reflect the specified time with the letter indicator “T” or the number 20.
In this case, paid leave is automatically extended or, at the request of the employee, transferred to the next working year, which is prohibited during rest without pay.
Are weekends included in such vacation?
HR workers sometimes have difficulty accounting for unpaid vacations in their timesheets. The thing is that the Labor Code does not directly indicate whether the rules relating to paid leave and unpaid leave apply.
They actually turn on. To begin with, it is necessary to take into account that the provisions of the Labor Code on not including holidays apply only to annual leave and additional leave.
As for weekends, the Labor Code does not have any restrictions on their inclusion in the vacation calculation period. This applies to both paid and unpaid vacations. Thus, when calculating the duration of the period of rest without pay, it is necessary to count both weekends and holidays.
Attention! It must be remembered that the length of service that affects the provision of paid leave depends on the number of unpaid days. Thus, according to the Labor Code, only 14 such days per year can be taken into account when calculating annual leave
If the employee needs a longer period, then the number of days over fourteen will move forward the end of the working year.
In order to avoid such a situation, it is more profitable for the employee to divide the unpaid leave into parts, excluding weekends and holidays from it. In this case, if the application indicates two periods from Monday to Friday, he will document only 10 days of vacation, while in fact he will have a full two weeks at his disposal.
What to consider when developing your report card
When creating your own time sheet, you must take into account the legal requirements on mandatory details for documents (Article Law No. 402-FZ):
- name of the form;
- Date of preparation;
- name of the company or last name, first name, patronymic of the individual entrepreneur;
- content of the recorded event (days of work, rest, illness, absenteeism, etc.);
- units of measurement;
- position of the compiler, transcript of the surname and initials of the responsible person, signature of the person who filled out the document.
The accepted form of the report card is approved by the manager and enshrined in the accounting policy.
Determining the duration of vacation
The duration of unpaid leave as a general rule is determined by agreement between the employee and the employer.
In this case, the circumstances (reasons) why the employee needs such leave are taken into account. The maximum duration (period) of leave without pay, provided at the request of an employee, is not limited by labor legislation.
For certain categories of employees, the current legislation establishes a guaranteed duration of leave without pay, which the employer is obliged to provide to them on the basis of a written application. For example, the following categories of workers:
- participants of the Great Patriotic War - up to 35 calendar days per year;
- for working old-age pensioners (by age) – up to 14 calendar days per year;
- parents and wives (husbands) of military personnel who died or died as a result of injury, concussion or injury received during the performance of military service duties, or as a result of an illness associated with military service - up to 14 calendar days a year;
- for working disabled people – up to 60 calendar days per year;
- for employees in cases of the birth of a child, marriage registration, death of close relatives - up to five calendar days (Rostrud letter No. 1646-6-1 dated June 14, 2011).
In addition, the employer is obliged to provide leave without pay in other cases provided for by the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, other federal laws or a collective agreement.
For example, if in a part-time job the duration of the employee’s annual paid leave is less than the duration of leave at the main place of work, then the employer, at the employee’s request, must provide him with leave without saving the salary of the corresponding duration (Part 2 of Article 286 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation). Confirmation: Art. 128 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.
A collective agreement may establish annual additional leaves without pay for up to 14 calendar days for the following categories of employees:
- workers with two or more children under 14 years of age;
- workers with disabled children under 18 years of age;
- single mothers raising children under 14 years of age;
- fathers raising children under 14 years of age without a mother.
Such leaves are provided to employees at a time convenient for them.
Confirmation: Art. 263 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.
Heroes of the Soviet Union, Heroes of Russia, full holders of the Order of Glory, as well as Heroes of Socialist Labor and full holders of the Order of Labor Glory have the right to leave without pay at a time convenient for them for up to three weeks a year (Clause 3 of Article 8 of the Law of the Russian Federation No. 4301-1 of January 15, 1993, paragraph 2 of Article 6 of Federal Law No. 5-FZ of January 9, 1997).
It should be borne in mind that the duration of unpaid leave granted to an employee may affect the calculation of length of service for annual basic paid leave. This length of service does not include the time granted at the employee’s request without pay, exceeding 14 calendar days during the working year.
Confirmation: para. 6 part 1, part 2 art. 121 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.
