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Set up and process TOIL

How to set up and process Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) for employees.

Oliver Cook avatar
Written by Oliver Cook
Updated this week

TOIL stands for Time Off in Lieu, and is when an employee works pre-approved overtime and receives compensatory time off for what they worked.

EXAMPLE: If an employee works two hours extra one day, they can 'bank' those two hours to use at a later time, for example to finish early one afternoon.

If your company allows TOIL, there are multiple ways in Sage HR to process it.

Below is a quick overview of how we recommend to process TOIL:

  1. Create a time off policy called e.g. TOIL.

  2. Add an employee's TOIL hours by adjusting the hours of their time off balance for TOIL manually.

    Alternatively if you have the Timesheets module, you can set it up so that overtime hours are allocated to a selected time off policy when an employee enters and submits their timesheet hours.

  3. If an employee wants to use their TOIL, when they make a time off request, they can then select the TOIL time off policy.

Below is how to do these steps in more detail.


Create a TOIL time off policy

  1. Click your name in the top right, then click Settings.

  2. On the settings menu click Time off, then click Policies.

  3. Click Add new policy.

  4. Give the policy a name and a description – For example, you could call it TOIL, with a description Time off in lieu.

  5. Select to allocate zero hours once at the beginning of employee start date.

    Example of a TOIL policy.


  6. Set the General, Conditions, Allowance, Workflow, and Additional fields settings as required, then scroll down and click Save.

  7. You are then prompted to assign employees to this policy. You can either select Everyone, or select specific employees.

    If you want to assign employees later, simply click Eligibility on the time off policy at a later time when required.

📌TIP: Want more information about setting up time off policies?


Change TOIL balance for an employee manually

If you don't use the Timesheets module, an admin can add TOIL manually to your TOIL time off policy, or any time off policy if you choose not to make a specific TOIL policy.


Change TOIL balance for an employee automatically

If you have both the Timesheets and Leave Management modules, you can set up overtime settings so that overtime hours are allocated to a time off policy. For example, your newly created TOIL time off policy.

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