Available for the following Payroll plans: Standard, Premium
Available for the following user access levels: Admin

This article will take a look specifically at public holidays and how to automate public holidays so that the pay run automatically assigns public holidays rates and public holiday conditions to a particular employee. The scenarios that we will look at include:

• Employee paid a penalty rate for a public holiday.
• Employees paid a flat rate and given a spare public holiday.
• Employee public holiday day off.

Before you progress through the following instructions, you will have to make sure that your locations have the correct states configured. To do this, go to the payroll classic Settings > Locations page and view the Regional Anniversary Day column. If any are wrong or missing, click into the corresponding location to fix it. Pay condition rules work by interpreting timesheet data into the pay run, so if you are not using timesheets, rules sets can not do anything. Also, the Rule Sets feature is only available on our premium plan.

Configuring pay categories

You will first need to set up your pay categories. To do this, go to the Settings > Pay Categories page and click on the Permanent Ordinary Hours pay category. If there is not one already, you will need to add a linked pay category called Permanent - Public holiday (not worked). You will set this as a flat rate that we will pay the employee. You will also need to check the other settings and configure according to your business needs. 

Next, add another linked pay category, this time called Public Holiday. It will still accrue leave but will have a penalty loading, for example, 50%. Check the other settings and configure as required. More information about pay categories can be found in the following article.

Configuring work types

The next part of the process is setting up the required work types. You can read more information about work types in the following article. You will need to:

• Create a work type the employee can use to indicate that they did not work on the public holiday.
• Call it Public Holiday Not Worked, as this will only be applicable for full-time and part-time employees.
• Link it to the Permanent - Public Holiday (not worked) pay category. 
• Click the Save button.

Configuring tags

You can apply tags to specific employees, and then use them in rule sets as a way of specifying individual or groups of employees in which a specific rule should apply. For example, in the case of public holidays, we can use a tag to decide whether an employee gets a penalty rate, or gets paid a base rate and applicable amount of leave instead. 

You will need to go to the payroll classic Settings Tags page and add a tag that says something like AL instead of penalty. Once you add the tag, you will be able to apply it to the required employees by ticking the box alongside their name. To read more information about tags, refer to the following article. 

Configuring rule sets

If you have already attached employees to a rule set, you will need to add new rules on top of the existing rule set so that they are still linked to the existing data. To do this, go to the payroll classic Settings > Rule Sets page and click on the existing rule set. 

If your employee is not already attached to a rule set, and you do not want these rules to be part of any existing rule set, you can create a new one for this purpose. To do that, go to the payroll classic Settings > Rule Sets page, and click the Add button to the right of the page. 

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. 

Employees are paid a penalty rate for working on a public holiday.

Create a rule called penalty rate on a public holiday and configure it following the below steps: 

1. When time worked in a shift period.
2. Where a public holiday is any public holiday.
   
   

   Helpful Hint

   When selecting public holidays in the rule set, you can choose between any (all) public holidays, 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. 

3. Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a public holiday.
   
   

   Important

   Please check this step as it 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.
4. Click the Add Condition button.
5. Select work type is not public holiday not worked.
6. Click the Add Condition button.
7. Tag does not have AL instead of penalty.
8. Is greater than zero hours.
9. Then apply pay category of permanent public holiday.
10. Click the Save button.

Employee paid a flat rate and given a spare public holiday.

Create a rule called AL instead of penalty rate on a public holiday and configure it following the below steps:

1. When time worked in a shift period.
2. Where public holiday is any public holiday.
   
   

   Helpful Hint

   When selecting public holidays in the rule set, you can choose between any (all) public holidays, 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. 

3. Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a public holiday.
   
   

   Important

   Please check this step as it 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.
4. Click the Add Condition button.
5. Select work type is not public holiday not worked.
6. Click the Add Condition button
7. Tag has AL instead of penalty.
8. Is greater than zero hours.
9. Then apply pay category of permanent public holiday.
10. Click the Save button.
11. Is greater than zero hours.
12. Then multiple actions. 
13. Apply pay category of permanent public holiday.
14. Click the Add Action button.
15. And set rate multiplier to 0.40.

    Helpful Hint

    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. 

16. Click the Add Action button
17. Add leave accrual of one unit of annual leave per hour worked.
18. Click the Save button.

Employee public holiday day off

Rule sets are not needed for this scenario; however, the important thing to remember about this is that the platform cannot automatically pay a public holiday for timesheet employees without a timesheet being submitted. If they do not submit a timesheet, they will not get paid for the day. Salary employee's however, are paid their hours by default in the pay run, will be paid their usual hours regardless of a Public holiday.  So, in the case of timesheet employees not working on a Public holiday, you have a couple of options. 

• 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 a public holiday not worked and pay their normal rate.
• 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 for 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

Testing the rules

You can check what is happening for each shift by using the rules tester.

• Go to the Rule Settings page.
• Select the award from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
• Select the rule set you want to check.
• Click the Test Rules button.
• Check the current period dates as 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 click the Run Test button.

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. 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 has been triggered may be overridden by another rule further down the list.

Explore related content

• Payroll classic platform: Adding and removing tags: This feature walks you through how to assign tags to an employee, allowing you to group employees together that regularly edit in bulk.
• Payroll classic platform: Bulk update pay rates: This feature allows you to edit and change multiple employee pay rates quickly, saving time editing these individually.