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We provide up-to-date state and federal public holidays for our users. However, we do not include public holidays legislated by state governments by default.
But, you can easily add these to your platform. Before you can continue, you will need to make sure that your locations have the correct States configured. Click here to read more.
This article will take a look specifically at public holidays and how to automate public holidays. This is so that the pay run automatically assigns public holiday rates and public holiday conditions to a particular employee. For example:
- Public holidays are excluded when calculating the amount of leave for leave applications.
- Employees are paid at a different rate for working on public holidays.
What you need to do
Warning
Pay condition rules work by interpreting timesheet data into the pay run. Therefore, if you are not using timesheets, the rules won't/can't do anything.
This section will walk you through how to configure pay categories and work types.
- Log on to the Payroll classic platform.
- Click on Payroll Settings.
- Click Pay Categories page.
- Click on the Permanent Ordinary Hours pay category. If there is not one already, you'll need to add a linked pay category called 'Permanent - Public holiday (not worked)'. This will be a flat rate that we will pay the employee. It will accrue leave and super.
- Click Add linked category, and call it 'Public Holiday' (for example). Set this linked category to accrue leave and super, but will have a penalty loading (for example 150%).
Here, you can create a work type which can be used by the employee to indicate that they did not work on the public holiday. You can call it 'Public holiday not worked' (for example) and link it to the 'Permanent - Public holiday (not worked)' pay category.
- Log on to the Payroll classic platform.
- Navigate to the payroll dashboard.
- Click Payroll Settings tab.
- Navigate to Pay Conditions.
- Click Work Types.
- Click Add.
- Enter the following fields:
- Name (of the work type is required);
- External ID: If an external ID is used that has been used before, you will not be able to save it if the 'unique external Id' setting is switched on. This setting is located on the Payroll Settings > Advanced Settings page.
- Automatically enabled for (select the employee types you would like to auto-enable the work type for).
- Work Maps to:
- Employee's Primary Pay Category.
- Pay Category (select relevant pay category).
- Leave Category (select relevant leave category) *** Apply to pay run as leave accrual, when this setting is enabled, timesheets entered using this work type will accrue leave rather than take leave.
- None (Shift Condition): see here for more information on shift conditions.
- Click Save.
- Log on to the Payroll classic platform.
- Navigate to Payroll Settings.
- Click Tags
- Click Add
- Enter the name of the tag
- Click Save
Helpful Hint
Apply the tag to the required employees by ticking the box alongside their name.
- Log on to the Payroll classic platform
- Navigate to Payroll Settings
- Click Rule sets
- Click on the existing rule set.
If they are attached to an award, you'll need to select the award first from the drop-down box.
If your employee is not already attached to a rule set, and you don't want these rules to be part of any existing rule set, you can create a new one for this purpose.
- Log on to the Payroll classic platform
- Navigate to Payroll Settings
- Click Rule sets
- Click the Add button to the right of the page.
Important
One thing to note about rule sets before going further is that rule sets work in order of evaluation from top to bottom, meaning the processing of the rules at the bottom happens last. Usually, you want something that pays the employees more to happen at the bottom, and this is true for Public holidays.
- WHEN 'Time worked' in a 'Shift period'
- WHERE (you'll need to click the cog icon on the right to see this option) 'Public holiday' is 'Any Public holiday' - In regards to selecting Public holidays in the rule set, you can choose between any (all) Public holiday, a specific Public Holiday, NOT a Public holiday or NOT one of the following. These selections give you the flexibility to use Public holiday parameters in a wide range of scenarios. '
- Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a Public holiday' - This is quite important because here we are saying that anytime between midnight and midnight on a public holiday is included. You can, however, change it to be one of the following to suit your business needs: -
- Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a Public holiday
- Only match shift if it starts on a Public holiday
- Only match shift if it ends on a Public holiday
- Match entire shift if the majority lies on a Public holiday
- Click Add condition button
- Select Work type is NOT Public holiday not worked
- Click Add condition button
- Tag does NOT have AL instead of penalty
- Is Greater than '0' hours (meaning it will trigger as soon as the shift starts)
- THEN Apply pay category of Permanent Public holiday
- Click Save
Warning
Re-order the rule to move it to the bottom so that it overrides anything that happens before.
- WHEN 'Time worked' in a 'Shift period'
- WHERE (you'll need to click the cog icon on the right to see this option) 'Public holiday' is 'Any Public holiday' - In regards to selecting Public holidays in the rule set, you can choose between any (all) Public holiday, a specific Public Holiday, NOT a Public holiday or NOT one of the following. These selections give you the flexibility to use Public holiday parameters in a wide range of scenarios.
- Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a Public holiday' (remember though, to choose the scenario that works for your business - This is quite important because here we are saying that anytime between midnight and midnight on a public holiday is included. You can, however, change it to be one of the following:
- Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a Public holiday
- Only match shift if it starts on a Public holiday
- Only match shift if it ends on a Public holiday
- Match entire shift if the majority lies on a Public holiday
- Click Add condition button
- Select Work type is NOT one of Public holiday not worked
- Click Add condition button
- Tag has AL instead of penalty
- Is Greater than '0' hours (meaning it will trigger as soon as the shift starts)
- THEN Multiple actions
- Apply pay category of Permanent Public holiday
- Click Add action button
- AND Set rate multiplier to 0.40. What we are saying here is that a public holiday usually pays double time and a half, but in this case we only want to pay the flat rate.
- Click Add action button
- Add leave accrual of 1 unit of Annual leave, Per hour worked
- Click Save
Warning
Re-order the rule to move it to the bottom so that it overrides anything that happens before.
Warning
the system cannot automatically pay a Public holiday for timesheet employees without a timesheet being submitted. If they don't submit a timesheet, they will not get paid (at all) for the day.
Salary employee's however, who are paid their hours by default in the pay run, will be paid their usual hours regardless of a Public holiday.
- Ask the employee to create a timesheet, and they can use the 'Public holiday not worked' work type. This work type links to the base rate and so will show up as 'Public holiday not worked' and pay their normal rate or,
- If you do not want employees to have to enter a timesheet for the Public holiday not worked, the workaround is to export a timesheet template in order for you to enter the details (remembering to use the 'Public holiday not worked' work type) on behalf of the employees before importing them. You could use one of the following timesheet templates:
- Example 1: This timesheet format uses datetime data in the start/end/break start/break end columns timesheet-import-format-A.xlsx
- Example 2: This timesheet format uses a date column with separate start time/end time columns timesheet-import-format-B.xlsx
- Example 3: This timesheet format uses a date column and a units column to represent the hours worked timesheet-import-format-C.xlsx
Important
You'll need to do a few things behind the scenes to be able to import timesheets. This includes adding an external ID to each employee, work type and location so that the import file can match the data in the system. You'll find more information here
- Log on to the Payroll classic platform
- Navigate Payroll Settings
- Click Rule Sets
- Select the Award from the drop-down menu at the top of the page
- Select the rule set you want to check
- Click Test Rules button
- Check the current period dates (the pay run period dates should match exactly to the current period or a previous period)
- Click on the Import button
- Select the employee whose shifts you want to test
- Scroll down and hit Run Test
Once each day's earnings are displayed you can expand the day you want to check and click on the question mark to show you the list of rules that have been triggered by that shift, eg... Then you can go check each rule that was triggered and see how/why it has been applied to that shift - keep in mind that rules are applied in order from top to bottom so a rule that's triggered may be overridden by another rule further down the list.
Explore related content
- Automate Public Holidays using Rule Sets: Watch a video guide outlining the steps you need to take to automate public holiday pay with rule sets.
- Setup and manage rostering roles This feature allows you to create a roster group such as front of house serving staff that you can then assign to your employees when entering their shift details.