Some Modern Awards have a clause pertaining to the substitution of public holidays by agreement. These conditions of pay have not been built into the platform awards as there are platform limitations to identifying the requested substitute day. If you want to provide this arrangement to your employees, you will need customisations to the award and manually track the substitute/alternate day.

An example of the wording of the clause - Substitution of public holidays by agreement:

An employee may ask to substitute another day for a day that would otherwise be a public holiday under the NES. The requested day will be substituted if the employer agrees to the employee’s request.
An employee may ask to substitute another part-day for a day that would otherwise be a part-day public holiday under the NES. The requested part-day will be substituted if the employer agrees to the employee’s request.

Helpful Hint

We provide up-to-date state and federal public holidays for each business, automatically. You can find out more about this topic in the following article. Pay condition rules work by interpreting timesheet data in the pay run, so you must use timesheets for these conditions to apply automatically through rules. Rule sets are only available on the Plus subscription plan.

Step 1: Configuring work types.

Click the Business menu, followed by the Payroll Settings submenu. Then select the Work Types option and click the Add button. Create a work type for substitute public holiday, for example Public Holiday - Substitute/Alternate day. You can add your own External ID data if this is required, but it is optional.

If you want to make the work type available automatically to employees, then select the Automatically Enabled For tick box, and select the applicable employment types. Next, map the work type to Employee's primary pay category and then click the Save button. You can find more information about work types in the following article, and. more information about pay categories in the following article.

Helpful Hint

You can map existing pay categories to this work type instead of mapping to the Employee’s primary pay category. If you want to use a new pay category, you will need to first create the new pay category, then map the work type to the newly created pay category instead of mapping it to the Employee's primary pay category.

Step 2: Configuring the rule sets

Click the Business menu, followed by the Payroll Settings submenu. Then select the Pay Conditions Select Rule Set option and choose the applicable rule set to edit. For more information on how to create, edit, and test a rule, please go to the following article. There are two rules that you need to create within the award rule set.

1st rule: Recognise the original Public Holiday worked as an ordinary day

It will enable the platform to pay for the hours worked on the original public holiday at ordinary rate of pay instead of the public holiday penalty hours. upon selecting the Public Holiday - Substitute/Alternate Day work types on a timesheet. Create the following rule:

When time worked on a shift, and
Where Public holiday” is “Any Public holiday.

Regarding selecting public holidays in the rule set, you can choose between any (all) Public Holiday, a specific Public Holiday, not a public holiday, or not one of the following. These selections give you the flexibility to use public holiday parameters in a wide range of scenarios.

Match part of the shift that lies on a public holiday. It is quite important because here we are saying that anytime between midnight and midnight on a public holiday is included. You can however, change it to be one of the following to suit your business needs:

Match entire shifts if it starts or ends on a public holiday.
Only match shift if it starts on a public holiday.
Only match shift if it ends on a public holiday.
Match entire shift if the majority lies on a public holiday.

Then click the Add Condition button and select the Work type is Public Holiday - Substitute/Alternate day. Next, ‌‌enter Is 'Greater than' 0 hours, meaning it will trigger as soon as the shift starts; then select the Apply Pay category of Permanent Ordinary Hours option. Finally, click the Save button.

2nd rule: Taking the substitute/alternate day on a Non-Public Holiday

It will enable the platform to pay the substitute day, which falls on a non-public holiday at penalty rates for hours worked, upon selecting the Public Holiday - Substitute/Alternate Day” work type on a timesheet. Create the following rule:

When time worked in a shift.
Where a public holiday' is not a public holiday, match part of the shift that lies on a non-public holiday.
Click the Add Condition button.
Select the Public Holiday - Substitute/Alternate day work type.
Is Greater than zero hours.
Then Apply pay category of Permanent - Public Holiday.
Click the Save button.

Rule sets work in order of evaluation from top to bottom. Make sure to exclude the new Public Holiday - Substitute/Alternate day work type from another Public Holiday rule. Customised rules are at the discretion of the client’s set up. Should you have any queries about this set up, please reach out to our Support team.