How to Add and Request an Earn & Claim Holiday Entitlement

This video will go through how to set up and manage your earnings based on hours worked and holiday entitlement. There are two types of earn and claim holiday types:

• Earn Holiday Based on Hours Worked and Claim with a Holiday Request
• Earn Holiday Based on Pro-rata Entitlement and Claim with a Holiday Request   

What is Earn & Claim?

Earn and Claim holiday entitlement means that staff must work a certain number of hours to receive holiday pay rather than instantly having access to all their annual leave.

There are two different ways to approach Earning and Claiming entitlement, which we will explain further. These are Earning based on Hours Worked OR Earnings Based on Pro-rata entitlement.

Earn based on Hours Worked

The first option we will go through is how staff can earn a holiday based on hours worked and then claim that holiday with a Holiday Request. This is not a fixed entitlement, and staff can earn more holiday the more they work.

With this option, staff work hours to earn a holiday allowance, which they can request to be taken off. They will then be paid for their days off using their entitlement. We will now go through how to set this up. 

Step 1

First, you want to choose your holiday entitlement.

To do this, go to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts to find your holiday options. Then, go to the Holiday tab of the contract to which you want to apply these holiday rules.

Under the Earning Holiday option select Earn holiday based on hours worked and claim with a holiday request. This will then show opens unique to this type of holiday entitlement.

From here you can select how staff can request holiday, if they can request to take off hours during the day or if if it needs to be in at least half day blocks.  You can also set up whether or not staff can make claims for hours not yet earned, assuming they will earn enough over the year. Only earned hours will be claimed, so they cannot be paid more than earned.

Additionally, you are able to add any dates that you want to block out or any additional holiday entitlements from here.

Step 2

Once you have set these details up, the next step is to create a Holiday pay element. To do this, Pay > Pay Settings > Pay Elements > Create a New Pay Element.

You will then add details and set this up like a normal pay element, including whether you want to include this element in wage sheets.

Set the rate of holiday pay here - this will probably be set at the same rate as your normal pay rate for the position.

The most important part is to mark this as a hidden pay element so that it won't appear as an option managers can manually assign to skills.

Step 3

The next step is to create the hours worked pay element, i.e., the regular hourly rate for the position and add a monetary value.

It is helpful if you name your pay element and holiday pay element something relating to the skill it will later be assigned to.

Once this has been completed, you need to enable the Percentage Holiday Pay Element option and select the holiday version of the pay element.

Then, in the ‘Holiday Pay Percentage’ box, you need to add the holiday percentage that must be accrued for each hour worked. A common example of holiday pay would be 12.07%, which is the mandatory amount of statutory annual leave with the working weeks of each year. This means that for every hour worked, a percentage of each hour worked will be added to holiday allowance pay.

Step 4

You must then add these newly created pay elements to skills that they are relevant to. Use Staff > Staff Settings > Staff Skills > Edit Skill to do this. Then, under the pay tab, choose the  Default Hourly Pay Rate option. This should be a new pay element that has the holiday pay element attached.

Once the pay elements have been attached to the skills and assigned to shifts, the shifts will be converted into time entries.The holiday hours are then added to the staff member's profile so they can make requests.

It is worth noting that any new holiday allowance that has been earned will only appear once a wage sheet has been run, as this is when a time entry has been marked as finalised.

Step 5

Then, all that’s left to do is request their holiday, which is sent to their line manager for approval. If set up in the system, staff can now set their holiday request down to the number of hours they want to claim when reviewing it.

It is important to note that if you cannot use your entitlement when you try to book a holiday and have chosen the 'deduct via working pattern' option, check that you have also set up your working pattern first!

Once the request has been approved, the holiday will appear on the timesheet. When the holiday shows on the weekly timesheet, it will show a time entry for every holiday time entry* that has counted towards the hours they have requested off.

Earn based on Pro Rata Entitlement and Claim

The second Earn & Claim option caps entitlement. Like the previous option, it requires staff to have worked a certain number of hours to generate their entitlement. However, with this option, staff can only earn holidays for a specific number of hours. 

They will earn holidays based on their worked hours, and the system will provide them with a holiday allowance based on the percentage of hours worked.

Once earned, this will appear under their holiday allowance, from which staff can request a holiday using their earned holiday.

Step 1

You want to go to your holiday tab under the contract you want to edit. Go to Pay > Contracts > Manage Contracts to find your holiday options. Then, go to the holiday tab of the contract to which you want to apply these holiday rules.

To use this option, select the Earn holiday based on pro-rata entitlement and claim with a Holiday Request option. Afterwards, select whether the holiday needs to be shown in hours or days.

Additionally, you need to add the value of the total available holiday entitlement for the year. This will cap the number of holiday days they can be paid for within a single year.

Step 2

This option does not require it to be linked to a pay element. You can immediately create a holiday request.

When creating a holiday request under this entitlement, you will see how much you have earned and how much of your yearly entitlement you can use.