If you’re migrating your payroll, you'll most likely want to set the opening balances for the leave entitlements and the year to date payment figures for your employees. If your previous payroll system specified the employee's leave balance entitlements in hours, you can still migrate your payroll easily by following the below calculation to convert your employees' leave balances from hours to days or weeks.

Determine current leave balances for existing employees

Once the last pay run has been processed from your previous payroll platform, generate a leave balance  report as at the last pay period end date. This is the first step you will need to undertake so that you have a record of all the current balances in hours from the previous payroll system for the leave category you want to convert for each active employee.

Converting leave balances from hours to days

For any leave categories that need to convert from an hourly balance to a day balance, the formula is as follows:

Total leave hours (for a specific leave category) divided by the employee's hours per day. For eg, if an  employee works 6 hours per day and their leave balance is 32 hours, the hours to days conversion will be calculated as 32 / 6 = 5.333 days.

Converting leave balances from hours to week

For any leave categories that need to convert from an hourly balance to a week balance, the formula is as follows:

Total leave hours (for a specific leave category) divided by the employee's hours per week. For eg, if an  employee works 32 hours per day and their leave balance is 213 hours, the hours to days conversion will be calculated as 213 / 32 = 6.656 weeks. 

Importing leave opening balances 

Once the employee's leave balances have all been determined by following the above calculations, then you can enter/import the leave balances initial values against the applicable leave type. Enter the balance as at the point of transition to this payroll system (that is, as at the later pay run processed in your previous payroll system). Partial days or weeks are entered as a decimal (eg: 6.5 days).

Prior to importing or entering any data, ensure your leave category settings are applying the correct unit type.

For more details on opening balances, refer to the following articles:

• Opening Balances Settings
• Setting Employees Opening Balances - Initial Values 
• Import/Export Employee Opening Balances - Initial Values

Explore related content

• How to Prevent Negative Leave Balances within Pay Runs Learn more about how to stop negative leave balances where employees have to 'earn back' leave.
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If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know via support@yourpayroll.com.au.