Available for Basic Payroll, Full Service Payroll
If you're moving your payroll to Patriot Software from another payroll provider, your employees may already have paid time off (PTO), vacation, or sick time balances built up. Patriot does not automatically import or calculate these balances from your previous software. You must manually enter each employee's existing time off balance so their hours are accurate going forward.
This article explains what information you need to gather before you switch, how to enter it, and an important limitation to watch for if you also use Time Off Accrual Rules.
Two Types of Existing Balances
Before entering hours, determine which type of balance each employee has in your previous system. This affects what information you need to enter.
Front-loaded (flat) balance: The employee receives a lump sum of hours at one time (for example, all vacation hours added on their hire date or renewal date), with no ongoing per-paycheck accrual formula.
Accrual-based balance: The employee earns time off gradually based on a formula (for example, one hour earned for every 40 hours worked), tracked by an accrual rule in the previous system.
Entering a Front-Loaded Balance
If an employee's existing time off hours are a simple lump sum with no accrual formula behind them, enter that total as their starting balance in Manage Time Off. No further breakdown is needed for this type of balance.
For step-by-step instructions on adding hours in Manage Time Off, see Managing Time Off.
Entering an Accrual-Based Balance
If an employee's existing balance came from an accrual rule in your previous payroll software, entering only the total hours is not enough. To make sure Patriot's own Time Off Accrual Rules calculate correctly going forward, you need to break the starting balance into three separate historical components:
Historical accrued hours – the number of hours the employee has earned so far during the current calendar year
Historical used hours – the number of hours the employee has already used during the current calendar year
Historical carryover hours – any hours the employee carried over from the previous calendar year
Enter all three components in Manage Time Off when you set up the employee. This lets any Time Off Accrual Rule you assign to the employee apply its calendar year accrual limit and carryover rules correctly, using accurate historical hours rather than starting from zero.
Setting Up the Matching Accrual Rule
If you also want Patriot to automatically accrue future time off for the employee (the same way their previous payroll software did), set up a Time Off Accrual Rule in addition to entering the historical balance above.
For full setup instructions, see How to Set Up & Managing Company Time Off Accrual Rules.
Important Limitation: Manually Entered Hours Do Not Count Toward the Accrual Maximum
If you set a maximum accrual limit on a Time Off Accrual Rule, that limit only applies to hours the employee earns through the accrual rule itself. Hours you manually enter through Manage Time Off — including the historical starting balance you enter when switching from another payroll provider — are not counted against that maximum.
Example: You set a Time Off Accrual Rule with a maximum accrual limit of 80 hours. You manually enter a starting balance of 60 hours for an employee switching from their previous payroll provider (representing hours they already earned there), then assign the accrual rule going forward. Because the manually entered 60 hours don't count toward the 80-hour maximum, the employee can continue accruing under the rule until their balance reaches 140 hours (60 manually entered + 80 from the rule), not 80 hours total.
Because of this, review each employee's total time off balance periodically after switching from another payroll provider to confirm it matches your intended policy limit. Patriot does not automatically adjust the balance down if it exceeds what you intended.
No Bulk Import Available
Patriot does not support importing time off balances or hours via CSV file. Each employee's starting balance and historical accrual information must be entered individually in Manage Time Off. If you are switching over many employees at once, plan for this to be a manual, per-employee process rather than a single bulk upload.