Time and leave

Payroll → Time & Leave is where you record time. It has four tabs:

Tab	What it is for	Does it change pay?
Timesheets	Logging the hours hourly employees work, including overtime and time off.	Yes, for hourly employees.
Leave & PTO	Leave types, leave requests and approvals, and each employee’s leave balance.	Approved leave can add time-off hours to the timesheet.
Holidays	Your holiday calendars and the days you observe.	No. It is a record.
Schedules & Shifts	Your shift patterns and who works them.	No. It is a record.

Which tabs you see depends on your role. Logging hours, approving leave, and managing holidays and shifts are separate permissions, which your workspace admin can grant. See Team and roles.

Hours and pay: how it works

Hours only matter for hourly employees. A salaried employee is paid their salary for each period whatever hours are logged.

For each hourly employee, when you calculate a pay run Bokapsys adds up the hours logged between the run’s Period start and Period end, and pays each kind with the standard US pay items:

Kind you log	How it is paid
Regular	At the hourly rate, under Regular Pay.
Training	Counted as regular hours, at the hourly rate.
Overtime (1.5x)	At 1.5 × the hourly rate, under Overtime.
Double time (2x)	At 2 × the hourly rate, under Double Time.
Paid time off, Vacation, Sick, Holiday, Bereavement, Jury duty	At the hourly rate, under Paid Time Off.
Unpaid	Not paid. Kept for your records.

When no regular hours are logged. If you log no hours at all for an hourly employee, Bokapsys pays their Standard weekly hours (from their record) for the number of weeks in the period, for example 40 × 2 = 80 hours on an every-two-weeks schedule. If you log only overtime or time off, Bokapsys still pays their standard hours as regular hours (less any time-off hours you logged) on top of what you logged, and the pay run warns you that it did. If that is not what you meant, log their regular hours and recalculate.

Worked example

Maria is hourly at $22.50 on an every-two-weeks schedule, period 01/05/2026 to 01/18/2026. She works 72 regular hours, takes 8 hours of vacation and works 4 hours of overtime.

1. Log 72 hours of Regular across the period (for example 8 hours on each working day).
2. Log 8 hours of Vacation on the day she was off.
3. Log 4 hours of Overtime (1.5x) on a date in the period.
4. Calculate the pay run: Regular Pay is 72 × $22.50 = $1,620.00, Paid Time Off is 8 × $22.50 = $180.00 and Overtime is 4 × $22.50 × 1.5 = $135.00, so her gross pay is $1,935.00.

Log hours

1. Open Payroll → Time & Leave. The Timesheets tab opens.
2. Click Log hours. The Log hours window opens.
3. Fill in the fields below.
4. Click Save. You see Hours logged. If the hours come out of a leave balance, the message also says the new balance.
5. Repeat for each day.

Field	What it means	Example
Employee	The employee who worked. Only hourly (non-exempt) employees are listed, because salaried employees are paid their salary.	Maria Gonzalez (EMP-0001)
Date	The day worked. It must fall inside the pay run’s period to be paid in that run. Defaults to today.	01/05/2026
Hours	Number of hours, more than 0 and no more than 24, with up to 2 decimals.	8
Kind	See the table above. If a leave type is linked to this kind, the window tells you the hours come out of that balance.	Regular
Note	Optional.	Covered the morning shift

See and correct hours

At the top of the Timesheets tab, choose a Period: this week, last week, next week, each of your recent pay periods, or a month. You then see:

• Hours by employee: each person’s Regular, Overtime 1.5x, Double time 2x, Paid time off, Not paid and Total hours for the period.
• Entries: every logged entry with its Date, Employee, Kind, Hours and Note. Use the pencil icon to edit an entry and the bin icon to delete it.

Hours are locked once they are paid. When a pay run that covers an employee’s date has been posted, their entries for that date show Paid and can no longer be changed or deleted. Trying to log new hours on that date fails with Payroll covering [date] has already been posted for this employee, so hours on that date can no longer be changed. Correct a paid period with a correction run instead. See Run payroll.

Changing hours after calculating. If you log or change hours for a period whose pay run is already calculated but not yet posted, the run shows Hours changed after this run was calculated and must be recalculated before it can be approved or posted.

Common problems: Choose an employee., Choose the date worked. or Hours must be more than 0 and no more than 24, with up to 2 decimals. mean a field is empty or out of range. If an employee you expect isn’t in the list, their classification is exempt, so they are paid their salary.

Leave and PTO

PTO (paid time off) is time an employee is paid for while not working: vacation, sick days and similar. On the Leave & PTO tab you set up the kinds of leave you offer, keep a running balance for each employee, and handle requests and approvals. The tab has three sections: Requests, Balances and Leave types.

Create a leave type

1. Open Payroll → Time & Leave and click the Leave & PTO tab.
2. Click New leave type. The New leave type window opens.
3. Fill in the fields and click Save. You see Leave type created.

Field	Required	What it means	Example
Name	Yes	The name people see. Bokapsys makes a short code from it.	Vacation
Hours earned	No	How many hours an employee earns each time, per the Earned rule. 0 means nobody earns this leave automatically.	6.67
Earned	No	Each pay period, Monthly, Quarterly, Yearly, Per hour worked or No accrual. The window explains when hours are added for the rule you pick.	Monthly
Most hours someone can hold	No	A cap on the balance. Leave blank for no limit.	120
At the start of each year	No	Keep every unused hour, Carry over up to a limit (then enter Hours that carry over) or Unused hours are lost.	Carry over up to a limit, 40
Paid on timesheets as	No	Links this leave type to a kind of timesheet hours, such as Vacation or Sick. Approved leave is then added to the timesheet as those hours, and hours of that kind you log by hand come out of this balance. Choose Not on timesheets to keep the leave as a record only.	Vacation
Paid	Ticked by default	Whether this leave is paid.	Ticked
Needs approval	Ticked by default	Whether requests must be approved.	Ticked

To change a leave type, click its pencil icon. To remove one, click its bin icon.

How balances grow

Bokapsys keeps each employee’s balance for each leave type as a running record of every change. Hours are added automatically according to the Earned rule:

Earned	When hours are added
Monthly	On the last day of each month the person works.
Quarterly	On the last day of each quarter.
Yearly	Once each year, on 1 January or on the first day the person or this leave type starts that year.
Each pay period	For each regular pay run, once it is posted.
Per hour worked	From the regular, overtime and double-time hours on each posted pay run. Salaried employees count as 8 hours a weekday.

Hours are earned from the later of the person’s hire date and the day you created the leave type, up to their leaving date, and never above Most hours someone can hold. At the start of each year, the carry-over rule is applied before the new year’s hours are added.

The Balances section shows, for each employee and leave type, the hours Available, Earned in and Used in this year (by the dates the leave falls on), and the hours Waiting for approval.

Change a balance by hand

Use this to enter an opening balance for someone who joined with leave already earned, or to correct a balance.

1. In Balances, click Change a balance, choose the Employee and Leave type and click Next. (Or click the adjust icon on a balance’s row.)
2. In Change, choose Add or take away hours or Opening balance (offered only if the person has no opening balance yet).
3. Enter the Hours (a negative number such as -4 takes hours away; an opening balance can’t be negative), the Date and, for an adjustment, Why.
4. Click Save change. You see Balance updated with the new available hours.

The window also lists every earlier change to that balance: what was earned, adjusted, carried over at the new year, and which pay run it came from.

Request and approve leave

1. On the Leave & PTO tab, click Request leave. The Request leave window opens.
2. Choose the Employee and the Leave type, enter the First day, Last day and number of Hours, and optionally a Reason.
3. Click Submit request. You see Leave requested, and the request appears with the status Waiting for approval.
4. Someone with permission to approve leave clicks Approve or Reject on the request’s row. Rejecting asks for a reason.

What happens when leave is approved:

• The hours come off the employee’s balance straight away.
• If the leave type is linked to a kind of timesheet hours, those hours are added to the employee’s timesheet for each weekday of the leave that falls in a pay period that is not yet posted. These entries change only by cancelling the leave.
• Once the last day of the leave has passed, its status changes to Taken.

Approving more than the balance. If the request is for more paid hours than the employee has available, Bokapsys asks Approve leave the balance does not cover? and shows what the balance would become. You can still approve it; the balance goes below zero.

Who can approve. You can’t approve your own leave, and if you entered a request for someone else, another approver has to decide it, unless you are the only person in the workspace who can approve leave.

Cancelling leave. Click the cancel icon on an approved or waiting request and give a reason. The hours go back on the balance and any timesheet entries it added are removed. Leave that has already been taken can’t be cancelled.

A request whose first day has passed while still waiting shows a reminder to approve or reject it, so payroll is right.

Note

For a salaried employee, approved unpaid leave does not reduce their salary on its own. The pay run warns you, so you can adjust their pay for that run.

Holidays

The Holidays tab keeps the days your business observes, grouped into holiday calendars (for example one per state you operate in).

1. Open Payroll → Time & Leave and click the Holidays tab.
2. Click New calendar. Enter a Name, the two-letter Country (filled in from your company settings) and, optionally, a two-letter State. Click Save. You see Calendar created.
3. Click Add holiday. Choose the Calendar, enter the Date and the Name of the holiday, tick Paid holiday if it is paid, and enter a Rate for working the holiday (1 is normal pay, 1.5 is time and a half). Click Save. You see Holiday added.

The Holidays list shows each holiday’s Date, Holiday, Calendar, Applies to, Paid and Rate; the Calendars list shows each calendar and how many holidays it has. Use the pencil and bin icons to edit or delete.

Holidays are a record: holiday pay is not added to pay runs automatically, and the rate is kept for your records. To pay a holiday to an hourly employee, log the hours as Holiday; to pay extra for working it, log those hours as Overtime (1.5x) or enter the extra pay on an off-cycle run. Paydays already move off federal bank holidays on their own; see Pay schedules.

Schedules and shifts

The Schedules & Shifts tab records your shift patterns, such as “Morning” or “Overnight”, and who works them.

1. Open Payroll → Time & Leave and click the Schedules & Shifts tab.
2. Click New shift. Enter a Name, choose the Kind (Fixed, Rotating, Split or On call), and enter the Start time, End time, Break minutes and Paid break minutes. A shift that ends before it starts runs overnight into the next day.
3. Click Save. You see Shift created.
4. To assign people, click the people icon on the shift’s row. In People on [shift], choose an employee and their First day on this shift, and click Assign.

The list shows Shift, Kind, Time, Breaks, Time zone and People. Shifts plan the schedule; pay comes from the hours logged on timesheets.

Related

Run payroll

Employees

Pay schedules

Employee self-service