Who Can Set Up a Brought Forward Policy?

A Brought Forward (Rollover, Carryover) policy brings forward any unused days from the current year to the next year's quota for specific leave types. The days are brought forward when the new quotas are given to the users. Only Administrators can set up the Brought Forward policy within Vacation Tracker. The option can be found on the “Locations” page of the Vacation Tracker Dashboard, in the “Leave Policies” tab.

Unlike some of our other features, the Brought Forward policy must be applied to an entire location. It cannot be enabled exclusively for certain users, but not for others. However, you can choose if the leave policies includes the brought forward option or not for each leave type.

Brought Forward Policy Use Cases

Generally speaking, the Brought Forward policy feature has three use cases:

The first case is when an organization doesn’t allow transfer of remaining days off to the next year. In this instance, users of Vacation Tracker simply should not enable the “Brought Forward Days” option in the sign up flow. As previously mentioned, if this policy has to be changed later on, it would be possible and simple to do so.

The second use case is when an organization allows for the transfer of all remaining days off to the next year. All of the PTO or vacation days, or any form of leave that a user has accumulated, simply transfers and gets added on to the total allocated days for the new year. For example, let’s look at a user who is entitled to 10 paid days off per year. If this user has only used 5 of those days off, then the remaining 5 will be brought forward to the following year. This means that, in the new year, the user could take up to 15 days of leave.

In the third and final use case for the Brought Forward policy, an organization may allow for the transfer of a limited number of days to the next year. In this instance, the Admin can also set the limit of vacation days that can be transferred. Say that limit is 3 days. That will be the largest number of vacation days that will be transferred to the next year for each user. Again, let’s take the example of the user with 5 remaining days off. In the third use case, this user loses 2 days of vacation time in the current year. Indeed, only 3 of his 5 days get rolled over to the current year.

Brought Forward Policy Expiry Dates

However, to avoid large accumulations of vacation days, Admins can decide to set an expiry date for the rollover policy. Accumulation can lead to prolonged paid leaves, which could greatly disrupt operations and budgets.

Hence, with the Brought Forward policy expiry date option, it is possible to put a restriction or an expiry date on the rolled over days. Actually, many organizations opt to limit the use of brought forward days to the first few months of the New Year. If these days go unused by the expiry date, they disappear. Nonetheless, normal allocated days off for the current year remain usable for the user.


For step by steps on setting a Brought Forward policy; the Brought Forward expiry date; or the ability to apply the setting in the past, please check the following articles:

How Do I Set a Brought Forward (Rollover) Policy?

Can I Set an Expiry Date for Brought Forward (Transferred) Days?

How Can I Apply the Brought Forward/Rollover Policy to the Previous Year (the Past)?

If you have additional questions about the rollover policy settings, contact us directly at support@vacationtracker.io or start a chat with us via our website at any time.

Updated on: 19/12/2023