The article provides an overview of how the platform determines otherwise working days when associated to public holiday earnings in the pay run. As well as guidance on how to configure business and employee settings to make sure best and correct usage of the automated public holiday payment function. The article is broken down into the following sections:

• What is an otherwise working day?
• Configuring minimum criteria for assessing otherwise working days
• How does the platform determine an employee's otherwise working day?
• Business settings relevant to automated public holiday functionality
• Employee settings relevant to automated public holiday functionality
• How are public holiday entitlements calculated in the pay run? 

What is an otherwise working day?

An otherwise working day is a day that an employee would have otherwise been working had the day not been a public holiday for that employee or had the employee not taken sick leave, bereavement leave, alternative holiday leave, or annual holiday.

Regarding public holidays, it is important to be able to determine whether a day is an otherwise working day for an employee. An employee has an entitlement to payment if they do not work on a public holiday, if such public holiday falls on the employee's otherwise working day. Alternatively, if an employee works on a public holiday where such public holiday falls on an employee's otherwise working day. The employee then has an entitlement to an alternative holiday in addition to penalty payments for hours worked.

Configuring minimum criteria for assessing otherwise working days

Where an employee does not have a clear and set work pattern or there is a lot of variation in the employee's work pattern, it may be hard to determine if a day is an otherwise working day. To cater for these scenarios, employers can define a minimum period of time in weeks. In which you will undertake an assessment to determine how often, in that period of time, the employee worked on that specific day each week. You can configure this setting in the Otherwise Working Days section of Advanced Settings page.

In the pay run, when determining if the day the public holiday falls on is an otherwise working day for the employee, the platform will look back at the employee's previously worked days over the defined assessment period.

If, for example, your business has set their assessment period to 12 weeks. During this 12-week period, the employee must work a minimum of five occurrences on a specific day of the week to meet the criteria of it being an otherwise working day. Upon reviewing the employee's historic work pattern, it is clear that the employee only worked four occurrences over the 12-week period and therefore does not qualify for an otherwise working day.  

How does the platform determine an employee's otherwise working day?

When determining whether an employee has worked during the assessment period, the platform will refer to an employee's earning lines in previous pay runs. Specifically, earning lines generated from:

• Timesheets imported into the pay run, including leave-based timesheets; 
• Leave requests applied in the pay run; and
• Advanced work hours. 

The reason we use the above, and only the above, is because they are date based and thereby leave no doubt as to what day of the week the earning line relates to. As such, we do not cater to earning lines created in the pay run via the following methods when determining otherwise working days:

• Leave ‌you manually apply in the pay run.
• Earnings that you manually applied in the pay run.
• Earning lines auto-applied in the pay run by default for employees that are set up with a basic work pattern.

In this instance, when processing public holiday earnings in the pay run and thereby assessing otherwise working day criteria, the platform will indicate that the employee has not worked and therefore it is not an otherwise working day. It can, however, be manually overridden whereby the platform will recalculate employee entitlements based on meeting otherwise working day criteria.

Business settings relevant to automated public holiday functionality

The automated calculation of public holiday entitlements in a pay run will only work where the following business settings are configured correctly and applied:

Public holidays

Public holiday and anniversary dates are automatically loaded in the platform with the applicable region/province configured accordingly. As such, there is no manual user intervention required.

Locations

When determining whether an employee has worked on a public holiday, the platform will look at the Regional Anniversary day setting of the location that you have applied in the timesheet and the advanced work hour configuration. For earning lines generated through leave requests, we will use the Regional Anniversary day setting of the employee's primary location.

As such, it is essential that any location made available to employees has the correct Regional Anniversary Day setting selected. If you set a location's Regional Anniversary Day setting to the None option, the platfomr will not recognise any public holidays against this location. Refer to this article for further information on setting up locations.

Work types

We have introduced two new work types to the platform to foster the automatic calculation of public holiday entitlements in the pay run. They are:

Public holiday worked

We link this work type to the Public Holiday Worked pay category.  

Public holiday not worked

We link this work type to the Public Holiday Not Worked pay category.

These new work types are automatically made available to all permanent and casual employees, however, users can edit this setting if they want to restrict the usage of these work types. You should use these work types ‌to assign timesheets on days that fall on a public holiday, depending on whether the employee has worked or not on such a day.

If an existing business has already created their own work types for public holidays, they can continue to use those work types. We strongly suggest however, that the platform pay categories for public holidays, explained below, are mapped to the existing work types. Refer to this article for further information on work types.

Pay categories

We have introduced two new pay categories on the platform that automate calculating public holiday rates. As these are platform pay categories, which you can identify by the System label next to the pay category name, you cannot delete these records. The new pay categories are:

Public holiday not worked

When you use the pay category on an otherwise working day, we will pay the employee at either their average daily pay (ADP) or relevant daily pay (RDP). As per the selection made in the Leave Pay Rates section of the employee's Pay Rates page. When you use the pay category for a public holiday that falls on a day that is not an otherwise working day, we will not pay the employee for any hours. I.e, the pay rate will display as $0 per hour. You can override the rate in the pay run and can read further details on this in the following article..   

Public holiday worked

We have set up the pay category by default with a 50% penalty rate loading. You can change this within the pay category setting if your business pays their employees a different penalty loading. You can override the public holiday rate at an employee level, which we cover further below.

When you use this pay category on an otherwise working day, we will pay the employee at their ADP/RDP multiplied by the penalty rate loading configured in the pay category. The platform will also automatically accrue one day of alternative holiday leave. When you use this pay category for a public holiday that falls on a day that is not an otherwise working day, we will pay the employee at their ADP/RDP multiplied by the penalty rate loading. 

You can select these pay categories when manually applying earnings in a pay run. However, as the platform does not know what public holiday the earnings relate to, and therefore the day of the week. We can not determine the otherwise working day assessment automatically and it will trigger a pay run warning.

To fix this, you will need to manually override the Undetermined public holiday setting in the public holiday context panel with the actual public holiday the earning lines relates to. It will then kickstart the otherwise working day assessment.  

Employee settings relevant to automated public holiday functionality 

The base rate used when paying an employee for a public holiday, whether worked or not, and where the public holiday falls on an otherwise working day is either the employee's average daily pay (ADP) or relevant daily pay (RDP). You ‌can configure this option in the Leave Pay Rates section of the employee's Pay Rates page. The section is also used to determine what calculation to apply when paying an employee for any day-based leave taken; for example, bereavement leave or sick leave.

You can override the pay rate associated with the Public Holiday Worked pay category at an employee level. It allows you to apply a fixed rate for each public holiday hour worked rather than ADP/RDP x penalty rate.

When using this feature‌ the employer and employee must agree on a specific higher amount than the legislated minimum or higher than the standard entitlement being applied to other employees in the business. To override the public holiday rate at the employee level, go to the employee's Pay Rates page and scroll down to the Public Holiday Worked pay category. Click the Override checkbox to open the hourly rate field where you can then enter the agreed fixed rate, and then click the Save button.

When you override an individual employee's public holiday rate and you apply the Public Holiday Worked pay category in the pay run; we will pay the employee the higher of:

• The fixed rate entered in their Pay Rates page, or
• Their ADP/RDP, as configured in the Leave Pay Rates section of the employee's Pay Rates page, multiplied by the penalty rate loading configured in the business Public Holiday Worked pay category.  

How are public holiday entitlements calculated in the pay run? 

In addition to the information provided in the business settings and employee settings section above. Any use of the Public Holiday Worked or Public Holiday Not Worked pay category in the pay run will trigger a tooltip that, when clicked on, will open a context panel. The context panel will detail the following:

• The specific public holiday and day of the week the holiday falls on.
• Employee's work pattern over the assessment period.
• If it is an otherwise working day or not.
• How we have calculated the pay rate.
• Whether the employee has accrued an alternative leave day for working on the public holiday.

You can find a full explanation of all the components in the public holiday entitlement context panel here. If, for whatever reason, the hourly rate applied to the employee in the pay run by the platform does not match with what the employer wants to pay, you manually override the rate.

To do this, select the Override checkbox, enter the hourly rate that needs paying, and then click the Save button. To re-apply the platform calculated pay rate for the public holiday earnings, simply click the Override checkbox again and click the Save button.