Calculating Time Off

When your employees submit a leave request in HR Partner, they can do so by specifying the starting and ending dates of their leave, or just specifying the start date, and the number of working days they wish to take.

In the first case, we will automatically calculate the number of working days they will be taking based on the start and end dates, and in the second case, we will be calculating their return date based on the start date and duration they specify.

How do we do this?  Well, it is all based on:

(a) the Working Day Template that the employee is currently setup on, and

(b) any Public Holidays that may fall within the dates they request.

Let's take a look at an example:

• Heather works a standard 8 hours per day, 5 days per week from Monday to Friday.  She has the weekends off like everyone else does.
• Roland works a 4 day week, and only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then Fridays and Saturdays.

Both Heather and Roland apply for 6 days of holidays, starting on Wednesday the 24th of the month.  Here is how we calculate their return dates:

Because Heather works Monday to Fridays only, we will start calculating her days off from Wednesday the 24th, then we will include the 25th, 26th, the 29th, 30th and 1st within her 6 days.  We ignore the 27th and 28th because they are a Saturday and a Sunday and are non working days for Heather. 

So Heather will be back in the office on Thursday the 2nd of the following month, after her 6 day break.

In Roland's case, his return date will be different, because he doesn't work on Mondays or Thursdays (or Sundays), but he DOES work on Saturdays.

So in his case, we will start by including Wednesday the 24th, same as Heather, but then we will skip Thursday the 25th, and include Friday 26th AND Saturday 27th in his working days off, as well as the following Tuesday the 30th, Wednesday the 1st and Friday the 3rd (skipping his non working day of Thursday the 2nd).

This means Roland won't be back in the office under Saturday the 4th of the following month - a few days later than Heather even though they both took their six days starting the same day.

Public Holidays

What about if there are public holidays in the mix as well?  Let's assume that Friday the 26th and Wednesday the 1st are both deemed as public holiday dates.

So if Roland applied for 6 days on the 24th, then the system would do the same calculations as above, BUT, we would skip over the two holidays, even though they are considered normal working days for Roland.

Now, the system calculates that Roland won't be back in the office until Wednesday the 8th of the following month, because we have had to skip the two public holiday dates as well.

Days vs Hours

The examples above are assuming the employees are taking whole days off work.  But what if they wanted to take half a day off, or if you do your leave accruals in hours instead of days?

Well, the good news is that we still do all the heavy lifting for you.  Employees who accrue in days can still ask for 0.5 of a day if they need a half day, and the system will calculate their return date accordingly.

For example, if Heather above asked for only 0.25 of a day on the 24th, then system would calculate her leave end date as the same day (24th) as she will be back in the office the same day.  If she asked for a day and a half (1.5 days), then the system would know she would be back on Thursday the 25th, having taken all of Wednesday and only half of Thursday off.

If you accrue in Hours, and your employee ask for x number of hours off, then our system will translate those hours back into number of days (based on the employee's working hours per day) and calculate their return dates accordingly.

Working Day Templates

As you can see from the above examples, setting up your working day templates and also your public holidays are critical towards getting your leave calculations correct.  Please see our articles on this documentation site for more information on setting these up.