Last updated on February 13, 2026
How Do I Set Up Seniority Based Entitlement (SBE) Automation?
Seniority Based Entitlement (SBE) is an automation that awards Users additional leave days after being with a company for a certain number of years. Vacation Tracker awards additional leave on top of their existing quota based on milestones you define.
Cannot be edited after creation
Once you create a Seniority Based Entitlement (SBE), it cannot be edited once configured.Admins only
Only Admins can create this automation.Complete plan only
SBE is an automation you can add to your Complete plan only. If you need Seniority Entitlement and you are on the Core plan, an upgrade will be needed. To learn more about our automations, see Guide: What Automations does Vacation Tracker offer?Setting It Up
- Log in to your Vacation Tracker account at app.vacationtracker.io/signin.
- On the left-hand side, click Workspace Settings → Add-ons.
- Click View on the Seniority Entitlement card under My Add-ons. (The page is titled SENIORITY ENTITLEMENT in the live app.) If you haven't subscribed yet, switch to the Discover More Add-ons tab and select Seniority Entitlement there.
- Click Create automation in the top-right corner.
- Fill in your options (see field reference below).
- Once you're done, click Create at the bottom of the form.
One policy per Location
You can create one Seniority Entitlement policy per Location. The form requires you to pick a Location — there's no global "apply to everyone" option. To create a Location, see How Do I Create a Location?Configuration Fields
- Name: — A name for the automation.
- Apply to all users? — Yes/No toggle. In practice the form requires a Location (below), so this is typically locked to No.
- Location: — Required. Select the Location this Seniority Entitlement applies to.
- Leave Type: — Select the leave type the additional days are added to. The system adds the extra days on top of the User's existing quota for the same leave type.
- Start applying seniority entitlement from: — Pick Today if Users already have individually set quotas with seniority included (the automation only adds days going forward), or User Employment Date to have the automation check everyone's employment dates and assign additional days based on the rules.
- Add days from: — Pick Employee's Start Date (the User waits for their anniversary date to earn the additional days) or Beginning of the fiscal year (additional days are available at the start of their anniversary year).
- Do you want to enable prorate? — Yes/No. If the User's employee start date does not match the fiscal/calendar year, Vacation Tracker will prorate the seniority earned days in the year they are awarded.
- Add [n] day(s) after [n] years in the company — The milestone definition. Click the + button to add additional milestones (e.g., 5 days after 2 years, 10 days after 5 years). Existing policies can also track in hours (e.g., "8 hours after 5 years") if your account uses hours.
Milestone tip box
The form shows a tip: "Seniority Automation awards additional leave in a milestone-based approach. For example: 2 days are added at the 5 year mark, totalling 2 days of seniority leave."Heads-up about User start date
If you select User start date, this will change the quota of all Users that already earned additional seniority-based days in the past. Make sure you set the correct start dates for all Users before configuring SBE.
Example — Beginning of the fiscal year: if your fiscal year starts on January 1st and you choose Beginning of the fiscal year and John's anniversary date is on August 15th, he will have the additionally earned days available even before his anniversary, from January 1st.
Example — Prorate: if your calendar year starts on January 1st, but the User started working on July 1st 5 years ago, and your company gives 5 additional PTO days on July 5th after 5 years of service, the User will receive 2.5 days on July 1st because of the prorate. This user will receive all 5 seniority-based days in the next fiscal year.
You can revisit any Seniority Entitlement automations you've previously created by going to Automations and clicking on Seniority Entitlement.
Earning Rules For Applying SBE Starting Today
If you've already manually adjusted quotas for your Users to include days they earned on their anniversaries in the past, the better option for you would be to start applying SBE from Today. This means we won't go back in the past to add the additional days for Users who already reached the milestone.
Worked example: it is January 16th, 2024, and you've just created the SBE Automation to add 5 days after 2 years and 5 days after 4 years in the company. If all Users whose anniversary dates were before January 16th 2024 were configured manually by the Admin, the Automation will only add the extra days for Users who have anniversary dates after January 16th.
- Example 1: Ana has been with the company for 2 years, she started on January 12th, 2022. The Admin must go to Ana's profile and manually add the 5 additional days since the anniversary date has already passed.
- Example 2: Stacy's 2nd anniversary with the company is coming up on September 3rd, 2024. Our system will automatically reward Stacy 5 additional days.
- Example 3: Rick's 4th anniversary with the company is coming up on March 3rd, 2024. The system will automatically reward Rick with 5 additional days, making it a total of 10 SBE days (additional days). But the 5 days he was supposed to be rewarded in 2022 for his 2-year milestone should have already been manually added by the Admin.
Role-based entitlement instead
If you're looking to assign additional quota based on roles or labels, see How Do I Set Entitlement by Role?Edit individual quotas
If you're looking to edit individual User quotas, see the helpdesk: How Do I Customize Leave Quotas for Individual Users?Removing the automation
To delete the automation, see How Do I Delete the Seniority Based Entitlement (SBE) Automation?
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