Ensure that leave is set up properly for leave types managed in days.
What's covered in this guide?
How it works
See our guide How does leave in days work? to learn more.
Set leave year start date
In order for our system to accurately calculate leave balances, you will need to enter a Leave Year Start date.
The leave year start date is the date at which leave is calculated from. To insert a leave year start date, go to Settings > All Settings > All Time Off Settings. Enter in the leave year start date and save at the bottom of the page.
Create and assign tags (award tags)
Award tags are used to connect Leave types to individuals so the system knows what entitlements each person should have. To create tags, navigate to Compliance > Classification tags and click on Manage:
Write the name of the tag in the box space and click on the green + button to create it:
To apply tags on your staff, check out this guide.
Create leave types
Navigate to Compliance > Leave types > Manage and click on + New leave type in the top right corner:
Note: If you already have a holiday leave, you can simply edit it.
Step 1 - Basic Leave Details
In Step 1 you will want to:
Enter a leave type name
Choose which staff to apply this leave type to apply to
Choose which staff you do not want this leave type to apply to
Choose when the leave applies on
For most Leave applies everyday(including bank holidays), this means this leave can be requested any day of the year.
If choosing Leave applies everyday (including bank holidays), you will also have the option to automatically apply leave on bank holidays.
A. If your staff always have bank holidays off, tick the box in this option.
B. If there are specific holidays where no one works, tick the box next to Applies on specific holidays and choose those holidays.
Step 2 - Costing Configuration
Enter in the multiplier for how staff are paid while on this leave type. The type of hours for annual leave will typically be classified as ‘Ordinary’ hours.
If you want to calculate the average cost and hours for employees who receive variable pay or who work irregular hours for this type of leave, enable Leave Averaging. For more on Leave Averaging, see our guide here.
Step 3 - Balance Configuration
In this step, you will need to add in the accrual rate that you use to calculate staff entitlement.
For UK organisations: We recommend following the guidelines set by the HMRC. You can select Automate Statutory Leave Balance Behaviour:
Learn more here for further information on Automate Statutory Holiday Entitlements.
Leave balance accrues
If your leave balance accrues, input the rate in the Leave Accrual Rate section. We recommend enabling the Automatically create a leave balance of this type for employees. This means that once you tag the staff member with the appropriate tag, they will automatically get a balance of 0 allowing for the calculation to begin.
If you are setting this up now for current staff, you may need to update their starting balance to reflect the correct current balance. For new staff coming on, their starting balance will be 0 and they will start to accrue time off as they work and timesheets are created.
Leave balance deducts
Most commonly this configuration applies to salary staff who have their full leave entitlement available from the beginning of the leave year. Again, it is recommended to also automatically create a balance for this leave type. Very useful all or most of your salary staff start with the same leave entitlement. This configuration will allow you to automatically prorate a staff member's leave entitlement if they came on part way through the year.
Step 4 - Advanced Settings
In this step, you can update settings for specific leave type.
Set 'leave in days'
In this step, tick the box for View and request this leave type in days:
Important: For the most accurate leave in days, you must set the Contracted Weekly Days and Contracted Weekly Hours within an individual employee's profile:
If you do not set an employee's contracted days and hours, their leave balance will be calculated based on your default leaves hours per full day of leave (within settings; see here):
If you want this type of leave to be excluded when exporting to payroll, tick the box:
Hit Save once complete.
Set 'leave year balance Rollback/Reset'
In this step, learn how to set up leave year resets. Please go to Leave Year Resets.
Enter starting leave balances
Please see our guide here on how to enter in the starting leave balances for staff. You have the option to do in bulk or per individual staff member.
After leave is set up
Once you've set your leave year start date, created the leave types, tagged your staff and imported their starting balances, you can view all of it under Reports > Leave Balance Report:
FAQs
FAQs
How are 'partial' or 'part-day' leave requests handled?
Employees whose leave entitlement is in days can submit a partial/part-day leave request. However, as per the advice from ACAS, how a partial day of leave is handled is between the employer and employee and agreed upon in advance.
Learn more about partial/part-day leave requests in Workforce here.
Can staff who are work irregular hours and accrue their leave entitlement in days?
The UK Government instructs that for employees who work irregular hours or have no fixed hours/days, their leave entitlement is accrued in hours and their pay reflects the average of 52 weeks (see UK government guidance).
Workforce is able to support calculating holiday over a 52 week period with our '52 Week Leave Averaging' feature. The 'leave in days' feature is purpose built to support staff who work regular hours or have fixed hours/days. We recommend staff who work irregular hours and accrue leave per hour worked Set up Leave in Hours.