Accrued Annual Holiday Leave Visibility Prior to Entitlement Period

Any annual holiday leave that has accrued for an employee prior to entitlement can be viewed on pay slips, as well as the employee portal and the manager portal. At the moment, it cannot be viewed within WorkZone or the leave balances page of an employee file.

This article will cover the following topics relating to the visibility of accrued annual holiday leave:

• How is the accrual of annual holiday leave calculated?
• Annual holidays Accrued / Taken / Balance columns explained
• Accrued annual holidays leave within a pay run
• Accrued annual holidays leave on pay slips
• Accrued annual holidays leave within the employee manager portal
• Accrued annual holidays leave within the employee portal
• What happens when an employee takes more leave than their entitlement allows?

How is the accrual of annual holiday leave calculated?

The system will show the annual holiday leave that would have accrued since the employee's last anniversary to the end of the pay period. In order to confirm the employees last anniversary, you can go to the Employee file > Leave allowances page. This will indicate whether the leave year should start on either their start date, or another specified custom date:

The calculation formula for working out accrued annual holiday leave is:

The standard allowance value (in either weeks or days) divided by 365 days (or 366 in a leap year), then multiplied by the number of days since the employee’s last anniversary to the end of the pay period that the pay slip pertains to. The below example is using 4 weeks as the standard allowance value:

The anniversary date is 30/01/2022 and the period end date is 05/05/2022 = 95 days. It's important to note that the formula also needs +1 day, so that changes the number of days to 96. The standard allowance is set to 4 weeks, so the calculation will be 4 / 365 * 96 = 1.05 weeks.

Annual holidays Accrued / Taken / Balance columns explained

For each 'Annual holidays' and 'Annual holidays accrued', there are 3 columns:

1. Accrued;
2. Taken;
3. Balance.

Each of these are explained below in relation to both Annual holidays, and Annual holidays accrued:

Annual holidays

• Accrued: Under the 'Accrued' column, the Annual holidays line will show "N/A" as there will never be an accrual for this leave category;
• Taken: Shows any entitled leave the employee has taken;
• Balance: When an employee reaches their entitlement period, the balance will move from the 'Annual holidays accrued' section, to here, the 'Annual holiday' balance.

Annual holidays accrued

• Accrued: This will show the leave that would have accrued since the employee's last anniversary to the end of the pay period using the calculation mentioned previously;
• Taken: Shows the amount of leave an employee has taken outside of their entitlement which is referred to as leave taken in advance;
• Balance: Under the Remaining column, the balance remaining is Accrued minus Taken = Balance. This is separate to the balance from the Annual Holidays line. When an employee reaches their entitlement period, the balance will move to the 'Annual holiday' section. 

Accrued leave within a pay run

Within a pay run, you are able to click into a specific employee in order to see a breakdown of their leave balances. You can do this via the 'Leave balances' button:

Once clicked, a context panel will open:

In relation to 'annual holidays' and 'annual holidays accrued', the following apply:

• Annual holidays balance: This will show a positive amount if the employee has reached their entitlement period. It will reflect the employee's total annual holiday balance, that is, the entitled annual leave not used starting from the employees start date, to the current pay period end date. If the employee has not yet reached entitlement, the balance will either be 0, or, in the above screenshot, if the employee takes leave in advance of their entitlement it will reflect a negative figure of leave taken. In the example above, the employee had 2 weeks annual holidays available (accrued since their anniversary), but in total (including previous pay runs) they have taken 2.4 weeks which has led to a 0.40 deficit. 
• Annual holidays accrued: This balance shows the amount of annual holiday leave accrued up to the end of the pay run, using the calculation discussed earlier in the article (anniversary date up to the PPE of the pay run). Something to be mindful of is that if there is a negative figure in the 'Annual holidays' balance (as is the case above), this will have already been deducted from the 'Annual holidays accrued' balance. So technically, in this pay run, the employee had accrued 1.05 weeks of leave, but took 0.40 weeks in advance which means the total accrued balance is 0.65 weeks. 

Accrued annual holiday leave on pay slips

To help explain the pay slip details clearly, we'll use the following employee scenario:

• The employee, Penny, has an anniversary date of 30/1/22;
• Her standard allowance is set to 4 weeks;
• The pay period end date is 5/5/22;
• As a total in previous pay runs, she had been entitled to 2 weeks of annual holidays;
• Within this example pay run, she is taking 2 weeks annual holidays;
• She had previously taken 0.4 weeks of annual leaves in a previous pay run (this can easily be confirmed via the Employee file > Leave balances page):

If we then look at the pay slip, under the 'Leave Details' section, there are 2 lines, one each for 'Annual holidays' and 'Annual holidays accrued'.

Using the employee scenario above the details outlined are:

• Annual holidays:
  • Accrued: This will always be N/A because accruals will always be within the 'annual holidays accrued' section;
  • Taken: As a total (ie from the employee start date) this employee has taken 2 weeks from their entitled leave balance;
  • Balance: This employee currently has no entitled leave
• Annual holidays accrued:
  • Accrued: As at the end of the pay run pertaining to this pay slip, the employee accrued 1.05 hours of annual leave, using the calculation mentioned earlier in this article;
  • Taken: Refers to the 'carry over' amount of leave taken in advance for this employee. This is because in total (within all pay runs) the employee had entitlement of 2 weeks of annual holidays, however, she has taken (in total) 2.4 weeks of annual holidays (2 weeks within this pay run, and 0.4 weeks in a previous pay run) so 0.4 of the leave taken is taken in advance. 
  • Balance: The balance of 0.65 weeks refers to the fact that she accrued 1.05 weeks within the pay run, but was in deficit for the extra 0.4 weeks, so this amount was deducted from the balance. 

Accrued annual holidays leave within the employee manager portal

Once an employee has requested leave, a leave request notification email will be emailed to any manager with access to that employee. For annual holiday requests, the estimated balance showing in the email is the annual holidays that the employee is entitled to, as well as the annual holidays accrual calculated (as explained earlier in the article), which is calculated up to the date the leave commences on, less any leave already taken in advance (when the employee doesn't have an entitlement):

When the manager logs on to Employee Management > Leave Requests, and there is an annual holiday leave request to approve/decline, when they hover over the units in that leave request, OR click the pencil edit icon OR click the 'Calendar' tab and the leave request from there, the leave balances box will show the following:

• Leave balance: The employee's annual holidays entitlement. If the employee has taken leave in advance of their entitlement, this will be a negative figure ;
• Accrued balance: The annual holiday accrual calculated up to the date the leave commences on (see 'Accrued leave calculation' section), less any leave already taken in advance (when the employee doesn't have an entitlement);
  NB: The 'Accrued balance' data within a leave request is different to the 'Accrued leave' within a pay slip in that within the manager portal it will show the accrued balance up to the date the leave commences as opposed to the pay slip showing the accrued balance up to the pay period end date of the pay run. 
• Approved leave: Any leave that has previously been approved, but not taken;
• Available balance: The available balance is the result of the total of the leave balance plus the Accrued balance, less any "Approved Leave";
• Leave required: The amount of leave required for the leave request.

Accrued leave within the employee portal

When an employee logs into the employee portal, they are able to view their 'Leave accrued' on the home page under the leave balances section:

The balance that will appear under the heading "Annual Holiday Accrual" will be calculated using the same calculation as above, however if the employee has taken any leave in advance (i.e. they have taken leave and don't have any entitlement available) this will be deducted from the calculated accrual.

So as an example, if the anniversary date is 30/04/2021 and the AS AT date showing in the employee portal is 10/10/2021 = 163 days, and the standard allowance is set to 4 weeks, the calculation will be 4 / 365 * 163 = 1.7863017 rounded to 1.79 weeks accrued. Then if the employee has taken 1 day in advance (no entitlement yet) the .2 representing the one day will be deducted from the 1.79 so the balance showing under "Annual Holiday Accrual" will be 1.59

When an employee applies for 'Annual holidays', in the leave application form that pops up, the Leave balance field will show the Annual Holidays they are entitled to (if any) and the 'Leave accrued' box will show the annual holiday accrual calculated up to the date the leave commences, less any leave already taken in advance (when the employee doesn't have an entitlement):

The "Available balance" will be the total of the Leave Balance plus the Accrued balance, less any "Approved Leave".

What happens when an employee takes more leave than their entitlement allows?

If an employee uses more leave than they have in entitlement, both the 'Annual holidays' and 'Annual holidays accrued' values will be affected. The 'annual holidays' line will show the full entitlement within the 'Taken' column, then the balance of the leave taken will show under 'taken' on the Annual Holidays Accrued line. The below is an example of leave details on a pay slip:

In the example above, the employee had 10 days of leave entitlement and they took 15 days of leave. Therefore, the 'Annual Holidays' line is showing the 10 days leave taken leaving a balance of zero entitlement. Then, in the 'Annual Holidays Accrued' line they have accrued 8.93 days of leave to the end of the pay period that this pay slip relates to and the remaining 5 days of leave taken is showing as taken, leaving a balance of 3.93.

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