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Track time off for the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

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This article explains how to track Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) eligibility and hours that are worked to meet federal requirements.

Prerequisites

The following table shows the prerequisites must be in place before you start.

Category Prerequisite
Task Make sure the settings on the Human resources parameters and Case category type security pages are accurate.
Knowledge and experience Be familiar with cases and how they work.
Planning Decide whether to integrate FMLA with Payroll.
Country/region (USA) The primary address for the legal entity must be in the United States.

Determine work eligibility

You can easily determine how many available hours a worker has for leave requests. To determine worker eligibility, follow these steps.

  1. On the Workers page, select the worker to determine eligibility for, and then click Employment > FMLA > FMLA eligibility.
  2. In the Effective date field, enter the date when you expect eligibility to begin.
  3. Click Calculate. The estimated number of available hours for both standard FMLA and military FMLA is shown. This number is determined by the number of hours worked, the length of employment, and whether the employee has taken any leave that reduces remaining hours.

Create an FMLA case

FMLA uses cases to track eligibility and hours that have been taken.

Note

Before you create an FMLA case, make sure that you have created the employment leave.

You must perform this step for all leaves of absence, regardless of whether the leave qualifies for FMLA.

To create an FMLA case, follow these steps.

  1. On the FMLA cases page, on the Action Pane, in the New group, click Case.

  2. Optional: If the case has already been approved, on the General tab, select the Approved check box. You can also select the approver.

  3. Enter the following information.

    Field Description
    Reason Select the reason for the leave.
    Leave request date Select the date when the leave was requested. This date is often the current date.
    Leave start date Select the first day of the leave. If this information changes, you can return to this page and update the value.
    Estimated leave end date Select the last day that the worker intends to remain on leave. If this information changes, you can return to this page and update the value.
    Approved hours Enter the number of hours that have been approved for the leave. The Eligibility section of the page should help you determine this value.
    Leave schedule Select the leave schedule.

  4. Optional: On the Certifications FastTab, enter any certification information to track.

  5. On the Associated leave FastTab, click Add. Select the employment leave that corresponds to this FMLA case.

  6. Optional: On the Case log FastTab, enter any notes about the case that you want to store for reference purposes.

Recalculate FMLA eligibility (if required)

After you create an FMLA case for a worker, you can recalculate the worker's eligibility at any time. To recalculate a worker's eligibility, follow these steps.

  1. On the FMLA cases page, open the case to log hours for.
  2. On the Action Pane, in the Maintain group, click Recalculate FMLA eligibility.
  3. Select the fields that should be updated based on the worker's current information.
  4. Click Recalculate.

Enter FMLA hours that have been taken (if required)

After an FMLA case is approved, you can change and track the number of hours that the worker applies to their FMLA leave. To enter FMLA hours that have been taken, follow these steps.

  1. On the FMLA cases page, open the case to log hours for.
  2. On the Action Pane, in the Maintain group, click FMLA hours.
  3. Click Add line, and enter the earning date, the number of hours that have been taken, and any applicable notes.

Note

The Source column is always set to Manual. If you're using finance and operations and Payroll, the Source column can be updated automatically, based on the earning code that is used on the employee's pay statement. To allow automatic updates from Payroll, you must set the option To manually enter and maintain the hours worked, uncheck this box to No. The default is to not allow automatic updates from Payroll.

Set up Payroll for integration with FMLA (if required)

If you use finance and operations and Payroll, you can use earning codes to automatically track the hours that have been worked that count toward FMLA. When earning lines that contain these codes are released during the approved leave period for a worker, the time counts toward FMLA and is added to the FMLA hours page for the FMLA case.

Tip

If you use this method to track FMLA hours, you can still change the hours manually after they are created.

To integrate Payroll with FMLA, follow these steps.

  1. On the Earning codes page, open an earning code that reduces the number of FMLA hours that are available for a worker when hours are logged for that worker.

  2. Select the Reduce remaining FMLA time check box.

    Note

    You can select this check box only if the Productive check box is cleared and the Unit of measure field is set to Hours.

Optional: Generate the FMLA hours taken report

You can create a report of all workers who have FMLA cases and the hours that have been applied toward each case. This report is available only in finance and operations. To generate the FMLA leave taken report, follow these steps.

  1. On the FMLA leave taken page, enter the first and last day of the leave period to view.
  2. Click OK.