Payroll Settings: Leave Categories

In Roubler, you can set up leave categories and control which will accrue automatically, how they will behave in the pay run, whether or not to include them in termination payments, and decide which should appear in your employees' payslips.

Management > Payroll > Payroll settings > Leave categories

Note: Any changes that are made to your business's leave category settings will not be applied to existing employees. The new settings will only apply automatically to new employees who are subsequently added to your payroll. To change leave settings for existing employees you will also need to make the same adjustments on each 'Employee file' > 'Leave allowances' page.  You can do this in bulk by using a leave allowance template, then apply that template to each employee's record. For details see: Leave Allowance Templates

Default leave categories

The default setup for a new business includes the following leave categories:

1. Annual Leave
2. Leave Without Pay
3. Personal/Carer's Leave
4. Time in Lieu
5. Long Service Leave
6. Family and Domestic Violence Leave

Add new leave categories

1. Click Add
2. Read this document for examples of how to set up leave based on different scenarios
3. Enter the following:
   
   
   • Name (required)
   • External Id: This is only required if you are using an external system to capture leave requests or timesheet entries and hence need to map the code used from such external system
   • Leave Loading percentage: Used to automatically apply leave loading, such as annual leave loading
   • Leave Category Type: There is a drop down box to choose from 'Standard' or 'Long Service Leave'
   • Employee Leave Balance: Choose from 'Tracked' or 'Not tracked'. For some types of leave that aren't accrued in the usual way (e.g. leave without pay) it might not make sense for an employee to have a leave balance. In these cases you should set this value to 'Not tracked' to tell the system it doesn't need to keep track of how much of this type of leave an employee is entitled to.
   • Automatically accrues: Select this option if the leave is to accrue automatically. You will then be required to choose whether the leave will accrue on an ongoing basis or accrue based on a defined leave year. The leave year can be set as the employee's start date or another specific date. This date is specified via the employee's "Leave Allowances" page
      
   • Exclude from termination payout
   • Hide accruals from pay slips: Select this option if you do not wish to allow employees to see the amount of leave accrued for this leave category within a pay run on their pay slips;
   • Hide balances from pay slips and in employee portal: Select this option if you do not wish to allow employees to see the balance of this leave category on their pay slips or in the employee portal
   • Hide leave category name from employee view: Select this option if you do not wish to have the leave category name displayed in the calendar contained within the employee's portal. All that will be displayed is the employee name and the period of leave taken. This setting works in conjunction with the setting "Employees can view approved leave" from the Employee Portal Settings screen.
   • Standard allowance: This will only be displayed where leave is set to accrue automatically on an ongoing basis. Enter the number of hours per hour worked OR hours per pay run the employee is to accrue. You can also click on the calculator icon to assist with calculating the entitlement and ensuring the correct figure is being applied.
     
     
   • Leave accrual capping: This setting allows you to determine whether or not the number of hours accrued will be capped. If the accrual is to be capped, select "limited to" from the drop down list and then enter the maximum number of hours that should accrue: 
     
     
   • Standard allowance: Enter the number of hours per hour worked OR hours per pay run the employee is to accrue. You can also click on the calculator icon to assist with calculating the entitlement and ensuring the correct figure is being applied. This will only be displayed where leave is set to accrue automatically based on the employee's leave year: 
     
   • Accrue in advance: Select this option if you want employees to accrue their whole entitlement in advance. This means that the full annual entitlement will be accrued in the  employee's first pay run and will be added to their leave balance;
   • Leave accrual capping: This setting allows you to select whether or not the number of hours accrued will be capped. If the accrual IS NOT to be capped, select "not limited" from the drop down list. If the accrual IS to be capped, select "limited to" from the drop down list and then enter the maximum number of hours that should accrue;
   • Carrying over the balance: This setting allows you to cap the number of leave hours to carry over to the next leave year. If the entire leave balance is to be carried over, keep the default setting of "the entire balance". If only a portion of the leave balance is to be carried over, select "a maximum of" from the drop down list and then enter the maximum number of hours to be carried over. 
   • Payment setup: This determines whether the employee is paid for the leave taken and the pay category that is assigned when leave is taken. (The default setting for Payment Setup on the Annual Leave - leave category used to be Basic but this has been updated in later releases so that leave hours are reported against a separate pay category called Annual Leave Taken - you are free to change this if necessary)
     
   • Report the earnings for the leave taken against another pay category: When wanting to report payments for leave taken in a separate pay category (for reporting/journaling purposes), select this option. The earnings-related to the leave taken will be assigned against the specified pay category instead of the employee's primary pay category. When this alternative is selected, the option will be given to use the rate of pay from the employee's primary pay category.             
     
     
   • Custom: For advanced users only, this option allows the user to deduct hours from an arbitrary pay category and transfer them to another arbitrary pay category when leave is taken.

Weeks per year and days per year settings

We have removed the “weeks per year” and “days per year” leave accrual methods. For all new businesses and businesses that were not already using these accrual methods they will no longer be displayed as an option in the leave category or employee leave allowances pages.

If your business is already using either of these leave accrual methods, nothing will change and you will continue to accrue leave as you always have, however, we would strongly encourage you to consider switching to the “hours per hour worked” leave accrual method.