When a person accrues hours, HR can give them back as time off or correct their balance if something doesn’t add up.
Compensating turns hours from the balance into hours or days off; adjusting adds or subtracts hours with a reason. Both actions are recorded in the history, with the date and who performed them.
In this article you’ll see, step by step, how to compensate, how the person uses their time off, and how to make a manual adjustment.
☝️ Only users with the Balance permission can compensate and adjust balances. The person must also have an hour balance policy assigned.
1. Open the person’s balance
You can compensate from the main table or from each person’s history. Manual adjustment is only available in the history.
Go to HR > Hour balance.
To compensate without leaving the table, click the Compensate icon in the person’s row.
To open their history, click anywhere else in the row.
In the history you’ll see the Available balance card and, at the top, the Manual adjustment and Compensate buttons. If the person doesn’t have a positive balance, Compensate is disabled.
💡 You can also compensate from the employee profile, in the Available hour balance card under Summary.
2. Compensate hours with time off
Compensating subtracts hours from the balance, starting with the oldest, and moves them into a time-off pool. The compensation applies immediately and is approved automatically.
Click Compensate.
In the Compensate hours window, choose Hours off or Days off. You’ll only see the options the person’s policy allows.
Set the amount with the − and + buttons. Hours go up in half-hour steps, and days in half-day steps.
Review the summary: Hour balance, To compensate, Remaining, Equivalence and Pool.
If you want, add a Comment.
Click Compensate.
☝️ The amount follows the policy’s Minimum per request and Maximum per request, and it can’t exceed the available balance.
3. What happens after compensating
Compensated hours go into a pool: Compensated hours if you compensate hours off, and Compensated days if you compensate days.
The compensation appears in the history as Compensation as time off, with who did it and the destination pool.
It counts as compensated on that same day, even if the person takes the time off later. You’ll see it in the Compensated column of the table and in the Compensated in card for the current year.
The pool expires on the same date as the hours it comes from.
The first time you compensate hours or days, Holded creates the Compensated hours or Compensated days absence type.
Holded doesn’t notify the person about the compensation, so let them know yourself.
⚠️ A compensation can’t be undone or deleted. Once in the pool, those hours don’t go back to the balance.
4. Take the time off from Absences
The person uses their pool with a Compensated hours or Compensated days absence, just like any other absence.
📄 If this is your first time managing hourly absences, see Hourly absences.
The person can request it themselves, or HR can record it.
These absence types require approval and don’t deduct from vacation days.
Holded doesn’t allow you to record an absence that exceeds what’s left in the pool.
If an approved absence is cancelled, its hours go back to the pool.
☝️ You can’t edit or delete the Compensated hours and Compensated days types. You can only disable them in an absence policy if no one in that policy has unused compensated hours.
5. Adjust the balance manually
Use manual adjustment to correct a balance without changing clock-ins, for example, for hours at an event that weren’t clocked. Adjusting isn’t compensating: it only changes the balance and doesn’t create time off.
In the person’s history, click Manual adjustment.
Choose Add or Subtract.
Enter the Hours and minutes of the adjustment.
Enter the Reason. It’s required.
Click Accept.
If subtracting leaves the balance negative, Holded shows you the resulting balance before applying it. Click Confirm to apply it or Back to change it.
The adjustment appears in the history as Manual adjustment, with the reason and who made it. It’s dated today, so any hours you add start their expiry period from today. The compensated hours and days pools don’t change.
⚠️ A manual adjustment can’t be edited or deleted. If you make a mistake, make another adjustment in the opposite direction.
6. Check the history
Every balance entry is kept in the person’s history, from most recent to oldest. The Concept column tells you what type it is:
Daily balance: the difference for a day with its approved clock-ins.
Day adjustment: a correction to an already-counted day, for example, because a clock-in was edited.
Day reversal: a day that has something pending again and is removed from the balance until it’s resolved.
Manual adjustment: an adjustment made by HR, with its reason.
Compensation as time off: hours that were moved to a pool.
📄 Find out how each day is calculated in Hour balance: what it is and how it works.
In summary
Compensate to give hours back as time off, and adjust only to correct mistakes. Both actions are final and stay in the history, with their date, who made them and the resulting balance.