The information below relates to version 1 of the leave system, which applies to all accounts created before 3 September 2016 that have not been migrated to version 2 of the leave system.
If, however, you are already using version 2 of the leave system, you can find helpful information in the following section:
Setting Up Annual Leave Entitlement
SimplePay allows you to set up the annual leave entitlement that will be applied company-wide to all employees. The entitlement defaults to 14 days, so if this is correct, you do not need to do anything further.
If you do want to make changes to the entitlement, the process is as follows:
- Go to the Settings section on the left-hand menu.
- Click on Payroll Calculations > Leave.
- Enter the number of Annual leave days per year that you want all employees to be entitled to by default*.
- Click Save.
*Please note: you will still be able to add an additional entitlement for individual employees, as discussed below (under Extra Annual Leave).
Recording Leave Taken
Payroll Administrators can record leave taken by employees by capturing the days on a calendar linked to the employee’s profile. This can be done as follows:
- Go to an employee’s profile and click on Record Leave Taken.
- Click on the day on which the employee is taking / took leave.
- Select the leave Type from the drop-down menu.
- Edit the To date if the employee is taking / took more than one day.
- public holidays will be excluded from these dates automatically
- weekends will be excluded for employees on a Fixed schedule unless weekends form part of their Regular Working Days
- weekends will be included for employees on a Casual / Temp schedule
- Click Confirm to the right of the calendar.
- If you have finished recording leave, click Save; otherwise, repeat the above steps to record additional leave.
Hourly paid employees will be paid for leave taken while salaried employees generally won’t be paid extra when they take leave – their leave pay is included in their salary as the amount is fixed. More information about leave pay can be found in the following article:
Note: only leave days recorded for the current or previous periods are taken into account. In other words, future-dated leave will only be counted on the payslip of the period to which the leave relates.
With regards to leave days for previous periods, please note that all aspects of historic leave captured during the current month will reflect on the current month’s payslip. For example, if you’re busy creating the payslip for March 2017 and you record leave for December 2016, the leave days taken and any associated pay will reflect on the March 2017 payslip.
Leave Adjustments
If you want to capture leave take-on balances or need to do some other type of adjustment* to leave balances, you can make use of the Leave Adjustments functionality. It will enable you to make changes to the balances at any time during the year, even after finalising your first payslip.
*Please note: you will be able to enter positive and negative adjustments. Positive adjustments will increase the balance of that leave type, while negative adjustments will decrease the balance.
The following process should be followed to make adjustments to employees individually:
- Go to an employee’s profile and click on Add next to Payslip Inputs.
- Click on Leave Adjustment under Leave.
- On this screen, you can adjust the balances of the relevant leave types.
- Click Save.
Alternatively, you could make leave adjustments in bulk, as follows:
- Go to Employees > Bulk Actions.
- Click on Payslip Inputs under Payroll Inputs.
- Click on the drop-down menu showing “Basic Salary” by default and select “Leave Adjustment” at the bottom of the drop-down list.
- Check the box under Add and then you’ll be able to enter adjustments to the balances of the relevant leave types on that screen.
- Click Save.
Note: any leave adjustment that is made will only take effect / be included in the balance once you have finalised the payslip you were working on when the adjustment was entered under Payslip Inputs.
Extra Annual Leave
After setting up the default annual leave entitlement that will be applied company-wide, as discussed above, you might need to increase some employees’ entitlement because they have longer service periods, and this will entitle them to more annual leave days.
The process to capture such an addition to the leave entitlement / accrual on the system for an individual employee is as follows:
- Go to the employee’s profile and click on Add (next to Regular Inputs).
- Click on Extra Annual Leave under Leave.
- Enter the number of extra Working days per year that the employee is entitled to.
- Click Save.
Alternatively, you could add extra annual leave in bulk by following these steps:
- Go to Employees > Bulk Actions.
- Click on Regular Inputs under Payroll Inputs.
- Click on the drop-down menu showing “Basic Salary” by default and select “Extra Annual Leave”.
- Check the box under Add and then you’ll be able to enter the additional number of annual leave days that the employee should be entitled to.
- Click Save.
Giving Employees Leave Upfront
If you want your employees’ leave entitlement to be available to them upfront, you can set up it up in the following way:
- Follow the steps above (under Setting Up Annual Leave Entitlement) and set the company-wide annual leave entitlement to 0 days.
- Follow the steps above (under Leave Adjustments) and adjust the leave balances of the individual employees to their annual entitlement that you would like to be available upfront.