This guide details how to configure and use an automated public holiday leave type to pay employees who don't work on a public holiday but are entitled to be paid for their ordinary hours of work.
Please note: Before setting up automated public holiday leave, you must configure a public holiday region in your account. To learn more about how to set up public holiday regions, see our help guide: Configure your public holiday region.
What Does This Help Guide Cover?
How it Works
When using an automated public holiday leave type, Tanda automatically checks whether an employee has worked on a public holiday. This automated check happens at 11pm on the day of the public holiday. From there:
If the employee hasn't worked on the public holiday: Tanda applies the automated public holiday leave request.
If the employee worked on the public holiday: The employee is paid based on their hours worked, meaning the automated public holiday leave request does not apply.
To determine if an employee worked on a public holiday, Tanda checks if any timesheet entry exists for the employee on the day of the public holiday.
Creating an Automatic Public Holiday Leave Type
By default, all newly created Tanda accounts already contain an example leave type called 'Public Holiday (Paid/Not Worked)'. You can use this example leave type or create a new one from scratch by following the steps below.
To create an automated public holiday leave type, navigate to Time & Attendance > Compliance > Leave Types > Manage > + New leave type. Then:
Name the leave type (e.g. 'Public Holiday Leave').
Select the award template to which this leave type will apply.
Select whether this leave type will apply to all staff or staff from a particular category (based on award tags).
Tick that the leave will apply on Public Holidays, then read the information box and decide whether you want the leave to apply automatically on all holidays, on selected holidays, or not at all.
Set the pay rate multiplier (typically, this will be 1.0x the employee's base hourly rate, though this will vary depending on your circumstances).
Set the leave accrual rate.
Configure any of the following advanced settings, if required:
Click Save at the bottom of the page to save your changes.
Eligibility Requirements
Before any leave is automatically created, our system validates five fundamental conditions:
Leave Award Configuration
A leave type must be set up to apply on a public holiday (either on Public Holidays or every day, including public holidays). The leave type must be set to apply automatically on public holidays:
Employee Assignment
The leave type must be set up to apply to all employees or employees with the same tags as the employee. Leave types can also be set up not to apply to employees with certain tags.Holiday Matching
Public holiday leave types will be automatically applied only on recognised public holidays where the employee is assigned to work. If the leave type specifies particular holiday names on which it should apply (e.g., "Australia Day"), only those holidays will trigger automatic leave creation.Non-work requirement
The public holiday leave application system will not automatically create leave requests if the employee has worked any shifts on the public holiday. In that case, the leave type must be applied manually.Recent work requirement
The public holiday leave application system will not automatically create leave requests if the employee has not worked any shifts in the previous month. In that case, the leave type must be applied manually.
How Does This Feature Interact With Leave Autofill?
Our public holiday leave application system is fundamentally intertwined with our leave autofill mechanism, which determines appropriate hours for leave requests. To learn more about leave autofill, see this help guide.
To summarise, the leave autofill mechanism allows customers to configure how Tanda should automatically apply hours to leave (including automatically created public holiday leave). Customers can create multiple leave autofill configurations, with employees aligning with a configuration based on tags.
Each leave autofill configuration can be set to autofill leave hours based on any combination of the following options:
Published Rostered Shifts
Unpublished Rostered Shifts
Regular Hours of Work
Recent Pattern of Work
Leave autofill checks each of these options in the configured order. In some instances, as detailed in the table below, a leave autofill option will return no matches, in which case the system will automatically check the next configured option.
Autofill Option | Returns no matches if: |
Published Rostered Shifts | For the roster week that includes the public holiday, there are no published rostered shifts for any of the teams in which the employee can work. |
Unpublished Rostered Shifts | For the roster week that includes the public holiday, the employee has no published or unpublished rostered shifts. |
Regular Hours of Work | The employee does not have any regular hours of work. |
Recent Pattern of Work | The employee does not have any recent pattern of work based on the relevant organisation settings (i.e, number of shifts on a day over a number of weeks, both of which are configurable). |
Troubleshooting
If you are having issues with this feature not applying correctly, please review the following common troubleshooting concerns:
No public holiday paid not worked leave will be created if the option returns matches generally, but not for the public holiday specifically. In that case, the leave autofill mechanism determines that the employee does not have ordinary hours on that day and is not entitled to public holiday paid not work leave. This can be overridden manually.
If no recent pattern of work is found for the 'Recent Pattern of Work' autofill option, the leave autofill mechanism will not proceed to the next autofill option, including the organisational defaults.
No public holiday paid not worked leave will be created for rostered days off when those are in a published or unpublished roster or the employee's regular hours of work.
Public holiday paid not worked leave will not be created for any days where the employee has worked a shift or has a leave request that includes any hours. However, a public holiday paid not worked leave request will be created if it overlaps with another leave request (e.g., annual leave) and that other leave request is for zero hours.
If these troubleshooting solutions do not resolve your concern, please contact support@tanda.co.
FAQs
Can you apply an automated public holiday leave type manually?
Can you apply an automated public holiday leave type manually?
Yes. You can apply this leave type ahead of time manually or apply it to previous public holidays. To do so, select the 'public holiday (paid/not worked)' leave type when creating the leave request.
How many hours will be added to the leave request?
How many hours will be added to the leave request?
The length of the leave request is determined by your leave autofill settings.