Available for the following plans: Employment Plus, Employment Unlimited
Available for the following Payroll plans: Standard, Premium
Watch the training video
This guide explains how to configure leave categories within your payroll platform, controlling accrual, pay run behaviour, termination payment inclusion, and payslip visibility. You can access these settings via 'Payroll settings' > 'Leave Categories' on the dashboard.
Leave categories are the means through which your employees can submit time off against a pre-defined category. These pre-defined categories allow you to track what type of leave your employees are taking and the balance they have accrued, giving your organisation the means to manage and report on employee leave within your business.
Important Notes:
- Changes to leave category settings apply automatically only to new employees added after the change.
- For existing employees, if no leave allowance template is assigned, individual adjustments are required via each employee's 'Leave Allowances' screen.
- Alternatively, you can modify existing employee leave settings in bulk using a leave allowance template.
Getting started
- Log into your Employment Hero Payroll classic platform.
- Click the Business Settings menu.
- Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
- Click the Leave Category button.
- Click the Add button to the right of the screen.
- Complete the following fields:
- Name (required)
- External ID - This is only required if you are using an external platform to capture leave requests or timesheet entries and hence need to map the code used from such external platform. If an external id is used that has been used before, you won't 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.
- Leave Loading percentage - Used to automatically apply leave loading, such as annual leave loading
-
Leave Category Type - There is a drop-down box to choose from:
- Standard
- Long Service Leave
- Personal/Carer's Leave
Note: If 'Personal/Carer's Leave' is selected, the fields Automatically Accrues and Standard Allowance will be pre-populated and locked, i.e. cannot be edited.
-
Employee Leave Balance - There is a drop-down box to choose from:
- Tracked
- Not tracked
Note: For some types of leave that aren't accrued in the usual way (e.g. leave without pay) it might not make sense for an employee to have a 'balance'. In these cases, you should set this value to 'Not tracked' to tell the platform it doesn't need to keep track of how much of this type of leave an employee is entitled to.
- Click the Save button.
Automatic Accrual Settings
- Automatically accrues - Select this option if the leave is to accrue automatically. You will then be required to choose whether the leave will accrue on an ongoing basis or accrue based on a defined leave year. The leave year can be set as the employee's start date or another specific date. This date is specified via the employee's "Leave Allowances" page.
If you select Based on the employee's leave year, you will see another option appear: Leave entitlement to start after? If you select leave entitlement to start after, then tick the box, and add the time period in months that you would like the leave entitlement to start after.
Termination and Visibility Settings
- Exclude from termination payout - Select this option if you do not want any of the unused leave balance for this leave category to automatically be paid out upon termination.
- ETP - You can only select this option if the "Exclude from termination payout" option above is not selected and the "Employee leave balance" is set to 'Tracked'. If the leave category can be classified as an employment termination payment (ETP) when paid out on termination, for eg unused sick leave, unused rostered days off and/or time off in lieu of overtime, you should tick the checkbox so that the payout of the unused leave is correctly classified as an ETP and taxed accordingly.
- Hide accruals from pay slips - Select this option if you do not wish to allow employees to see the amount of leave accrued for this leave category within a pay run on their pay slips.
- Hide balances from pay slips and in the employee platform - Select this option if you do not wish to allow employees to see the balance of this leave category on their pay slips or in the employee platform.
- Hide leave category name from employee view - Select this option if you do not wish to have the leave category name displayed in the calendar contained within the employee's portal. All that will be displayed is the employee name and the period of leave taken. This setting works in conjunction with the setting "Employees can view approved leave" from the Employee Portal Settings screen.
Accrual Configuration for Ongoing Basis
The following settings will only be displayed where leave is set to accrue automatically on an ongoing basis:
-
Standard allowance - Enter standard weeks per year, standard days per year, number of hours per hour worked OR hours per pay run the employee is to accrue. You can also click on the calculator icon to assist with calculating the entitlement and ensuring the correct figure is being applied.
Note: The 'Limit leave accruals to the first pay run for the period' will only display if the allowance is set to Standard Weeks per year or Standard Days per year.
- Leave accrual capping - This setting allows you to select whether or not the number of hours accrued will be capped. If the accrual is to be capped, select "limited to" from the drop down list and then enter the maximum number of hours that should accrue.
Accrual Configuration for Leave Year
The following settings will only be displayed where leave is set to accrue automatically based on the employee's leave year:
- Standard allowance - Enter the number of units the employee is to accrue. You can also click on the calculator icon to assist with calculating the entitlement and ensuring the correct figure is being applied.
- Accrue in advance - Select this option if you want employees to accrue their whole entitlement in advance. This means that the full annual entitlement will be accrued in the employee's first pay run and will be added to their leave balance.
- Limit leave accruals in the first pay run for the period - Enabling this option will allow the leave type to accrue in the first pay run for the pay period, and cap the leave for any other pay runs with the exact same pay period start and end date. This applies to ordinary pay runs and ad hoc pay runs.
- Leave accrual capping - This setting allows you to select whether or not the number of units accrued will be capped. If the accrual is not to be capped, select "not limited" from the drop-down list. If the accrual IS to be capped, select "limited to" from the drop-down list and then enter the maximum number of units that should accrue.
- Carrying over the balance - This setting allows you to cap the number of leave units to carry over to the next leave year. If the entire leave balance is to be carried over, keep the default setting of "the entire balance". If only a portion of the leave balance is to be carried over, select "a maximum of" from the drop-down list and then enter the maximum number of units to be carried over.
Unit Type
The setting "Unit type" will only display if the "Automatically Accrues" checkbox is not ticked. This setting is required so that the platform knows whether to display the leave in days, weeks or hours. The display is relevant when an employee applies for leave. When a leave category is displayed in either days or weeks, the leave will then be converted into hours in the pay run and a conversion formula will be made available to see how the conversion was calculated.
Payment Setup
This determines whether the employee is paid for the leave taken and the pay category that is assigned when leave is taken. (The default setting for Payment Setup on the Annual Leave - leave category used to be Basic, but this has been updated in later releases so that the leave is reported against a separate pay category called Annual Leave Taken - you are free to change this if necessary)
- Basic: When an employee does not use timesheets, the employee's leave balance will be reduced, earnings are not impacted. When an employee is using timesheets to submit all time worked, an earnings line will be created and the leave balance will be reduced. To check or assign the employee's timesheet setting, go to the employee's 'Pay Run Defaults' page. The timesheets option is near the top of the page.
- Don't pay for the leave taken: When an employee does not use timesheets, an earnings line with negative hours will be added to reduce the earnings for the employee. When an employee is using timesheets to submit all time worked, two earnings lines will be created (one positive, one negative) that will cancel each other out.
- Report the earnings for the leave taken against another pay category: When wanting to report payments for leave taken in a separate pay category (for reporting/journaling purposes), select this option. The earnings related to the leave taken will be assigned against the specified pay category instead of the employee's primary pay category. When this alternative is selected, the option will be given to use the rate of pay from the employee's primary pay category.
- Custom: For advanced users only, this option allows the user to deduct hours from an arbitrary pay category and transfer them to another arbitrary pay category when leave is taken.
NOTE:
- We have removed the "weeks per year" and "days per year" leave accrual methods. So for all businesses created from January 2017 onwards, those accrual methods were no longer available.
- We have added "standard weeks per year" and "standard days per year" as new leave accrual methods. Take note that these accrual methods are different to the historic "weeks per year" and "days per year" accrual methods.
- If your business is still using the historic "weeks per year" and "days per year" leave accrual methods, nothing will change and you will continue to accrue leave as you always have, however we would strongly encourage you to consider switching leave accrual methods as we will be retiring these historic accrual methods in due course.
- The following articles explain how the "standard weeks per year" and "standard days per year" leave accruals are used when converting leave in pay runs, and if you are converting a leave category's accrual method from 'hours per hour worked' or 'hours per pay run' to 'standard days per year' or 'standard weeks per year'
- Log into your Employment Hero Payroll classic platform.
- Click the Business Settings menu.
- Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
- Click the Leave Category button.
- In the Leave should start on field, select either:
- Employee start date.
- The following date.
- Click the Save button.
Editing data
- Log into your Employment Hero Payroll classic platform.
- Click the Business Settings menu.
- Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
- Click the Leave Category button.
- Click on the name of the leave category to expand the settings.
- Make the relevant changes and click the Save button.
Important: Any changes made to leave category settings will not be applied to existing employees. Updated settings will only apply automatically to any new employees who are subsequently added to your payroll. If you want to change the leave settings for your existing employees, you will also need to make the same adjustments on each employee's Leave Allowances page. You can manage this better by using leave allowance templates.
Deleting data
- Log into your Employment Hero Payroll classic platform.
- Click the Business Settings menu.
- Click the Payroll Settings submenu.
- Click the Leave Category button.
- Click the Delete button next to the leave category you wish to remove.
- Click the OK button to confirm deletion.
- Log into your Employment Hero Payroll classic platform.
- Navigate to Payroll settings > Restore deleted items.
- Select 'leave category' from the drop-down box.
- A list of all deleted leave categories will appear.
- Click the Restore option against the leave category that you are wanting to reinstate.
Types of leave categories
Please note this list gives you a guide of types of leave that can be created using the guide above, and is non-exhaustive:
- Annual Leave
- Carer's Leave
- Ceremonial Leave
- Community service Leave
- Compassionate Leave
- Family and Domestic Violence Leave
- Leave Without Pay
- Long Service Leave
- Parental Leave
- Personal/Carers Leave
- RDO
- Time in Lieu
- Training Leave
Further information
- Name - This is a required field.
- External ID - This is only required if you are using an external system to capture leave requests or timesheet entries and hence need to map the code used from such external system. 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.
- Leave Loading Percentage - Used to automatically apply leave loading, such as annual leave loading.
- Leave Category Type - There is a drop-down box to choose from Standard, Long Service Leave or Personal/Carer's Leave. If 'Personal/Carer's Leave' is selected, the fields Automatically Accrues and Standard Allowance will be pre-populated and locked, which cannot be edited.
- Employee Leave Balance - There is a drop-down box to choose from Tracked or Not tracked. Note: for some types of leave that aren't accrued in the usual way (e.g. leave without pay) it might not make sense for an employee to have a 'balance'. In these cases, you should set this value to 'Not tracked' to tell the platform it does not need to keep track of how much of this type of leave an employee is entitled to.
- Automatically accrues - Select this option if the leave is to accrue automatically. You will then be required to choose whether the leave will accrue on an ongoing basis or accrue based on a defined leave year. The leave year can be set as the employee's start date or another specific date. This date is specified via the employee's "Leave Allowances" page.
- Exclude from termination payout - Select this option if you do not want any of the unused leave balance for this leave category to automatically be paid out upon termination.
- ETP - You can only select this option if the Exclude from termination payout option above is not selected and the employee's leave balance is set to Tracked. If the leave category can be classified as an employment termination payment (ETP) when paid out on termination, for unused sick leave, unused rostered days off and/or time off in lieu of overtime, you should tick the checkbox so that the payout of the unused leave is correctly classified as an ETP and taxed accordingly.
- Hide accruals from pay slips - Select this option if you do not wish to allow employees to see the amount of leave accrued for this leave category within a pay run on their pay slips.
- Hide balances from pay slips and in the employee platform - Select this option if you do not wish to allow employees to see the balance of this leave category on their pay slips or in the employee platform.
- Hide leave category name from employee view - Select this option if you do not wish to have the leave category name displayed in the calendar contained within the employee's platform. All that will be displayed is the employee name and the period of leave taken. This setting works in conjunction with the setting "Employees can view approved leave" from the Employee Portal Settings screen.
- Standard allowance - Enter the number of units the employee is to accrue. You can also click on the calculator icon to assist with calculating the entitlement and ensuring the correct figure is being applied.
- Accrue in advance - Select this option if you want employees to accrue their entire entitlement in advance. This means that the full annual entitlement will be accrued on the employee's first pay run and will be added to their leave balance.
- Limit leave accruals in the first pay run for the period - Enabling this option will allow the leave type to accrue in the first pay run for the pay period, and cap the leave for any other pay runs with the exact same pay period start and end date. This applies to ordinary pay runs and ad hoc pay runs.
- Leave accrual capping - This setting allows you to select whether the number of units accrued will be capped. If the accrual IS NOT to be capped, select "not limited" from the drop down list. If the accrual is to be capped, select limited to from the drop-down list and then enter the maximum number of units that should accrue.
- Carrying over the balance - This setting allows you to cap the number of leave units to carry over to the next leave year. If the entire leave balance is to be carried over, keep the default setting of "the entire balance". If only a portion of the leave balance is to be carried over, select "a maximum of" from the drop-down list and then enter the maximum number of units to be carried over.
Unit Type
The setting "Unit type" will only display if the "Automatically Accrues" checkbox is not ticked. This setting is required so that the platform knows whether to display the leave in days, weeks or hours. The display is relevant for when an employee applies for leave. When a leave category is displayed in either days or weeks, the leave will then be converted into hours in the pay run and a conversion formula will be made available to see how the conversion was calculated.
Payment Setup Options
- Payment Setup - This determines whether the employee is paid for the leave taken and the pay category that is assigned when leave is taken. (The default setting for Payment Setup on the Annual Leave - leave category used to be basic, but this has been updated in later releases so that the leave is reported against a separate pay category called Annual Leave Taken - you are free to change this if necessary)
- Basic - When an employee does not use timesheets, the employee's leave balance will be reduced, earnings are not impacted. When an employee is using timesheets to submit all time worked, an earnings line will be created and the leave balance will be reduced. To check or assign the employee's timesheet setting, go to the employee's 'Pay Run Defaults' page. The timesheets option is near the top of the page.
- Don't pay for the leave taken - When an employee does not use timesheets, an earnings line with negative hours will be added to reduce the earnings for the employee. When an employee is using timesheets to submit all time worked, two earnings lines will be created (one positive, one negative) that will cancel each other out.
- Report the earnings for the leave taken against another pay category - When wanting to report payments for leave taken in a separate pay category (for reporting/journaling purposes), select this option. The earnings related to the leave taken will be assigned against the specified pay category instead of the employee's primary pay category. When this alternative is selected, the option will be given to use the rate of pay from the employee's primary pay category.
- Custom - For advanced users only, this option allows the user to deduct hours from an arbitrary pay category and transfer them to another arbitrary pay category when leave is taken.
Explore related content
- Manage your organisation's expense categories - This feature allows you to create a new expense category and include details such as the tax code and tax rate.
- Manage your pay categories - This feature allows you to create a new pay category and define the unit of accrual, super rate, rate loading, and payment classification.