Manually Adjust Time Off Balances

The article provides instructions on how to manually adjust an employee's time off balance in BambooHR. It is intended for Account Owners and Full Admin users, who can edit adjustments, while Custom Access Level users can create but not edit them. Adjustments can be made to add or subtract hours outside of automatic accruals or time off requests. The article differentiates between adjusting future balances and editing past time off history. To make an adjustment, users must select the appropriate time off category, choose to add or subtract hours, set an effective date, and provide a note for reference. Additionally, users are advised to use the Record Time Off button for recording time off, as this impacts various reports within BambooHR.

  • Mar 13, 2026
  • Knowledge

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Manually Adjust Time Off Balances
Article Text
This feature is included in the Core, Pro, and Elite packages.

How do I manually adjust time off balances?

Purpose: To help you understand how to manually adjust an employee's available time off balance.

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Only the Account Owner and Full Admin users have access to edit a manual time off adjustments. Custom Access Level users can create adjustments, but they can’t edit them afterward. Learn more about that, here!

Manually adjusting a time off balance tends to be used in specific instances. You should use an adjustment to:

  • Add hours outside of an automatic accrual (i.e., a bonus for an anniversary or a job well done, etc).
  • Subtracting hours outside of a time off request (i.e., a penalty for tardiness, an employee gifts some of their time off to a fellow employee, etc).

This is different than editing an employee's time off history as it is used for future balances whereas, editing an employee's time off history is to fix a mistake with a past balance.

Adjustment

Adjust an employee's balance by hovering your mouse over the time off category you would like to adjust and then click on the +/- button.

  1. Under Amount, select Add or Subtract and the number of days or hours.
  2. Select the effective date.
  3. Add a note as a reference for why the adjustment was made and click Save.

Remember that you should always use the Record Time Off button when manually recording time off for an employee instead of adjusting their time off balance. This is important because it will affect a couple of areas within BambooHR, such as your time off reports, the Payroll Change report, and the Who's Out widget. Click here to learn how to record time off for an employee manually.

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