1. Setting up a Scheme

Owned by Mark Holland (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 31, 2024 by Paul Dallen

Schemes are created through the Company -> Holiday Schemes page.

Figure 1 – Company Holiday Scheme

Key Fields


  • Scheme Type: If a non hourly scheme is chosen this field will determine how many working days are in a period (the standard types are, weekly equating to 5 days and monthly equating to 21.73 days). Also the labels will change to be applicable to a non hourly scheme.
  • Hours Accrued Per Hour: This is the fraction of an hour that will accrue for every hour worked

-    Example: In this example you want to pay the statutory minimum of 28 days per year. This equates to 0.1207 of an hour, for every hour worked, Therefore for every hour worked a worker will accrue 7.24 minutes of holiday.

  • Pay Elements. This allows the user to specify which pay elements are included in the calculation, both in working out whether the employee worked during a period and calculating the average pay rate. For example Basic Pay will be included in the calculation, whilst Bonus may not be.*

*NB Only payment type pay elements can be selected for hourly schemes.

Adding a pay element once the scheme is in use will recalculate the 52 week average. However this will not change the number of hours that have been accrued in closed periods

  • Holiday Year Start Date: The worker’s holiday balance resets once the pay period start date passes this date. If this is left blank (and the Use Employee Effective Date is not set) the holiday due figure will not clear down.
  • Use Employee Effective Date: Ticking this box signifies that the workers start date is used to determine the anniversary of the holiday year where balances are reset. Ticking this will disable the Holiday Year Start Date fields. 
  • Pay Holiday on Leave: Will automatically pay any remaining holiday in the worker's last pay period.

Different Scheme Types

As per the Introduction we recommend you to use a hourly scheme where possible.

For schemes where the type is based on pay frequency the current period will accrue a full period's worth of holiday if the employee has had ANY pay, against ANY of the pay elements included in the scheme and there is no holiday taken during the period or, where some paid holiday is taken a partial period which is based on the proportion that is assumed as worked or, where the employee has NO pay against any of the pay elements selected they will accrue 0.