Understanding Holiday Calculations

Understanding Holiday

There are two main types of paid holidays managed by StaffSavvy:

• Fixed Entitlement - This is a fixed amount of holiday a staff member receives at the start of the year and can book any time during the year.
• Earned Entitlement - This holiday is earned per hour worked and is either immediately paid out or stored so the staff member can claim it in the future.

Holiday rules are configured via a contract. Under the Holiday tab, you can choose the type of holiday StaffSavvy should apply by default.

• Disable holiday pay and entitlement - We'll hide holiday options for this staff member. They can still request time off.
• Pay holiday as a percentage of hours worked in wage sheets - Using the percentages and rates set under each pay element, automatically add holiday for every hour worked.
• Earn holiday based on hours worked and claim with holiday request (Earn and Claim) - Same as above, but it will not automatically add it for payment. Instead, store it on the staff member's account for them to claim with a new holiday request.

'Earn and Claim’ does not include hours already paid under a previous contract holiday mode.

When a new contract is signed, if someone was paid holiday under another type of holiday (e.g. automatic payment or yearly entitlement), and then moves to earning and claiming holiday, their total "claimed" holiday will no longer include any hours already paid out using a different method.

This means that when the new contract is started, it will not be affected by previous holidays and will be worked out by how many hours a staff member has worked in accordance with Earn and Claim.

To change how holiday pay is managed for each contract, go to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts > Edit > Holiday.

• Earn holiday based on pro-rata entitlement and claim with holiday request
  Earn holiday based on expected hours per year, and the system will provide a % of their yearly holiday allowance to them based on the % of the yearly hours expected that have been worked.
• Fixed yearly entitlement
  A fixed number of hours or days per year that the staff member has available.Note: You can add/subtract hours from a staff member's entitlement within their account so most staff can share a contract and have adjustments added this way.
• Fixed yearly entitlement (prorated)
  A fixed number of hours or days per year that the staff member has available. This is adjusted down if the staff member starts or finishes the assigned contract during the holiday year. Note: You can add/subtract hours from a staff member's entitlement within their account so most staff can share a contract and have adjustments added this way.
• Fixed entitlement with pay calculated on previous x weeks
  This option allows staff to have a prorated holiday allowance; however, their pay is calculated on a number of previous weeks (as defined) so that their holiday pay reflects the hours per week they have recently been working.

Holiday: Simple Mode

• Holiday Options: Simple mode only deducting on days with shifts
  To use, simply disable the “Ignore shifts” option when using a contract in simple holiday mode.
  This option allows you to only deduct holiday allowance on working days if the staff member also has a shift scheduled. It allows you to ignore non-working days rather than needing to use the complex calculation option.

There is a max number of days per week to be deducted when using simple mode. Only days that you are contracted to work will be deducted from your holiday entitlement.

There are then various options around how a holiday is treated. You can display the holiday in days (all requests will be rounded up to the nearest half-day) or hours (this will record holidays to the minute).

Calculation Method
This option allows you to choose either a basic or complex calculation method. The basic option only assigns a full or half day per calendar day and is perfect for simple holiday policies. The complex option will use shifts to calculate holiday usage carefully down to the minute. It's much more detailed but not always desired.

Hours per day
This is important as it informs the system of how many hours a full day counts. So, if an average employee has 7 hours per day and requests 3 hours off in the morning, this would be a half day. If they requested 5 hours off, then it would count as a full day.

The Holiday Day start time
Start time is also important as it tells the system when a holiday day should start; if someone requests 12 hours off from 1 pm until 1 am but their start time is 9 am, the system would only deduct 0.5 days as most of the requests fall outside the regular hours.

Holiday Days and National/Organisation Holidays
These holiday options allow you to set which days should count for holiday requests. This can be overridden per request, but it's easier to configure correctly at the start.

Existing Shifts option
The system can apply holidays in two ways: by ignoring the staff member's existing shifts or using them for the calculations.

If you choose to ignore the shifts, the system will use the fixed hours per day settings to calculate the number of hours a holiday request will require. If you use the existing shifts, it will review the shifts assigned to that staff member and use their hours to calculate the holiday request.

Using the existing shifts is perfect for someone with a complex working pattern who uses the regular repeating shifts feature. Ignoring the existing shifts is perfect for most operational staff, who won't know their shifts until a few weeks before, and holiday requests are scheduled much further in advance.

Detailed Breakdown of Holiday Calculation

You are able to view a summary of every staff member’s holiday allowance and breakdown. A more detailed breakdown of the holiday calculation was added to show how the total was generated.
This allows you to see the calculation for a full-time contract and then for the individual person based on their shortened year or less-than-full-time status.
 

You will see “Breakdown” buttons within the holiday summary boxes throughout the site, making it easy to find and view.