Overview
Taking leave is one of the core features of a payroll system. Unpaid leave aside, the usual expectation when applying leave taken is that the employee will be automatically paid. This system is no different although there are a couple of different cases to consider when understanding how leave taken will work. Primarily, you need to consider whether the employee is paid default, or a fixed pattern of hours or by timesheets, as this will change the way the leave is taken in the pay run.
The table below shows which payroll plans include the time off behaviour described in this article.
| Payroll Plan: | Standard | Premium |
Getting started
This is for permanent staff that do not get paid by timesheets - rather they are paid the same earnings each pay run, regardless of hours worked. Typically, these employees' Pay Run Defaults are set up with standard hours to be paid by default in the pay run, and the employee's timesheet setting should be Do not use timesheets or Use timesheets for exceptions only (e.g. overtime).
When the employee takes leave, this is automatically paid in the pay run, so the only acton you will need to take it to reduce the leave balance by the leave taken. Leave earnings are separated from ordinary earnings in the pay run.
Add two earnings lines when leave is taken - these lines remove the leave hours from the ordinary pay category and pay them against a leave pay category. The net effect of these two earnings lines is $0 so remember to include any leave hours with other hours worked in that pay period.
If there are no other hours worked in the pay period, you'll have to use the Add Earnings option from the Actions button within each employee record in the pay run and add an earnings line for the leave hours being taken.
For this case, the employee should have a timesheet setting of Use timesheets to submit all time worked in their Pay Run Defaults.
When timesheet employees take leave, we will automatically create a corresponding earnings line to pay for the leave. No deduction line is created as it is not expected the employee would submit a timesheet for hours worked if on leave.
The main case that is handled slightly differently is Leave without pay. A leave transfer rule deducts that number of hours from the primary pay category. In this scenario, we do not add a corresponding earnings line.
The main use of the leave transfer rules (apart from Leave Without Pay) is for when you need to allocate the payments for leave taken to a separate account in your ledger. In this case, you would need create a separate pay category for that specific leave category.
- Follow this link to create a pay category called Annual Holiday 2.
- Click on Business Settings.
- Click on the Payroll Settings submenu.
- Click on Leave Categories.
- Under the Payment Setup subheading, configure the leave category as a Custom payment setup.
- Select Employee's Primary Pay Category in Deduct hours from.
- Transfer hours to Annual Holiday 2 pay category.
If leave transfer rules are configured, the employee's pay rate must be maintained on the pay category. If the employee is being paid their base rate for leave taken, select the Use pay rate of employee's primary pay category for transferred earnings line checkbox and this will automatically apply the employee's primary pay rate in the pay run.
The employee's leave balances will automatically update with any leave taken or accrued in the pay run, and you can view this by selecting the employee's leave balances option.
You can access this from the following instructions:
- Click on the Pay Runs submenu.
- Click on your chosen pay run.
- Click on the dropdown arrow next to the employee's name.
- The Leave Balances button appears under the Notes for this Pay Run subheading.
This context panel will display the total updated balance as of at that pay run, including any leave taken or accrued in the period.
Author recommended
So you have now viewed how the payroll platform behaves when taking leave and you are now wondering, what next can I do? There are two recommendations I would make on this front and they are:
- How leave is applied based on setup scenarios | Payroll Guide: To get a better understanding of how the leave settings work based on your setup, we have provided several examples.
- Managing leave categories | Payroll Platform: Leave categories are the means through which your employees can submit time off against a predefined category.