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, then that is OKAY! You can still migrate your payroll easily by following the below calculation to convert your employees' leave balances from hours to days or weeks.

Converting leave balances from hours to days/weeks

Determine current leave balances for existing employees

The balances for Sick Leave, Domestic Violence Leave and Alternative Holiday Leave will need to be converted to the equivalent “Days” and Annual Holidays converted to the “Weeks” equivalent. The formula to work out the days and weeks conversion is as follows: 

For Days:

Total hours divided by the employee's hours per day. For eg, an employee works 8 hours per day. Leave balance for Sick Leave shows as 32 hours. The hours to days conversion will be calculated as 32 / 8 = 4 days. 

For Weeks:

Total hours divided by the employee's hours per week. For eg, an employee works 40 hours per week. Leave balance for Annual Holidays shows as 120 hours. The hours to weeks conversion will be calculated as 120 / 40 = 3 weeks.

Initial Opening Balances Value 

Once the employee's leave balances have all been determined by following the above calculation, then you can enter 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).

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

• Leave overview This article lists all the key features of our Leave Management module, with links included to access more detailed pages on each of the individual features of the module.
• Leave Without Pay - Annual Holidays Learn more about the options available on our platform for you to use when you need to manage your organisation's employee leave.

If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know via support@nzpayroll.co.nz.