Introduction
The Monthly Carryover Cap Workflow automatically limits how much leave balance an employee can carry forward at the start of each month.
It is commonly used for TOIL, but can be applied to any leave type. The workflow helps prevent excessive balance build-up by expiring any amount above a defined monthly cap, while keeping the allowed balance available to the employee.
When setting up this workflow, you specify:
An event name
A maximum carryover amount (in days and hours, depending on how the leave type is measured)
When the workflow should run (by default, the first day of each month)
How it works
On the scheduled date (typically the first of every month), the workflow runs and checks each employee’s remaining balance for the selected leave type.
For each employee, it will:
Check Remaining Balance
The workflow looks at the employee’s current remaining balance for the selected leave type.
Compare to Monthly Cap
It compares the remaining balance with the configured maximum carryover amount.
If the remaining balance is less than or equal to the cap, no action is taken.
If the remaining balance is greater than the cap, the excess amount is identified.
3. Expire Excess Balance
Any balance above the configured monthly cap is expired.
4. Email Report
Admins will receive a report of everyone who has had some entitlement expired.
The expired amount is recorded and shown as expired, so both employees and administrators can clearly see what portion of leave was lost.
Example
The workflow is configured with:
A monthly carryover cap of 10 hours
The workflow runs on the 1st of every month
An employee has:
20 hours remaining TOIL balance at the time the workflow runs
On the scheduled run date:
The workflow checks the employee’s remaining balance (20 hours)
It compares this to the monthly cap (10 hours)
The balance is higher than the allowed maximum
As a result:
10 hours are expired
The employee is left with 10 hours remaining
The expired 10 hours are shown in the system as expired, making it clear that this portion of the balance was removed by the monthly carryover cap.
Setup
There are a few things to update in this workflow - and they’re both right at the top of the designer.
The ‘Expire On’ Activity is where you define the exact date and time the workflow should wake up and begin the update. This uses cron syntax, a standard format for scheduling tasks.
Not familiar with cron? No problem - you can use this handy tool to build the right expression: https://crontab.guru/
Simply enter this expression into the 'Schedule' box, you can also add some helper text in the Comment box to remind you which date/time you have input.
The next activity is the Event Name, which is defaulted to Holiday in the Value box. This is which Event's entitlement we're looking at. If you want to change this, just make sure it is written exactly how it is displayed on Sense HR.
Next is the Max carryover days and hours, it is recommended to update both these fields incase entitlements are measured differently per employee.
How to get this workflow template
Please reach out to support for them to add this template to your designer. From there you can configure.