Configure your public holidays

With the calendar-style layout of the Public Holiday page, you can effortlessly view the next upcoming public holiday and the annual outlook for each state or location within your platform.

As you explore the months in the calendar view, keep in mind that regional holidays will require manual entry. Many regions have holidays unique to their city, country, or shire, such as the 'Brisbane Ekka Show Day. We have outlined the steps for creating a public holiday in the following section.

  Use this helpful Fair Work resource to view the most up-to-date Regional public holidays for your State or Territory. Regional public holidays are listed at the bottom of each state section.

You'll have the option to add public holidays and configure them to:

• Portions of time - When a public holiday is for part of a day. 
• Specific Awards - If the holiday applies to a specific Award.
• Specific employees - If the holiday applies to specific employees.
• Specific operations or rosters - If the holiday applies to specific rosters.

  Hot tip:  We recommend adding all regional holidays at the start of January, ensuring that none are overlooked and preventing payroll errors!

 

Key knowledge for public holidays

Once configured in your platform, how they are paid will be influenced by various parts of your platform. Here are the key areas where this interaction occurs, along with links to relevant resources for a deeper understanding.

• How public holidays are paid, including the rules and rates, will be configured for each position in each Award and Agreement in your platform.
• The award settings for each specific award will determine how 'Public holiday, not worked' shifts are paid to permanent employees.
  • Here, you'll also have the option to customise how your 'Public holiday, not worked' shifts display on the employee's payslip and some reports.
  • You'll also be able to nominate a default payment method.
• Specific permanent and salaried employees can have further configuration on their profiles, including:
  • Use normal rate toggle - If enabled, the employee will be paid their Ordinary Base rate when working on a public holiday.
    
      Please note: This setting will override any other platform setting.
     
  • Deduct Leave toggle - If enabled, the employee's leave balance will be reduced when a leave application includes a public holiday.
• How shifts are rostered and approved on public holidays will determine how they are paid to casuals and permanent employees. See the full guide here.

Once you have confirmed that you need to add a public holiday, you can do so quickly and easily by either creating the holiday from scratch or copying it from a previous year and simply checking that the configuration is still accurate.

This section covers creating from scratch; please refer to the next section to understand how to copy a holiday.

To create a public holiday:

1. Navigate to the main menu > Payroll settings > Public Holidays.

2. Use the date selector to locate the appropriate date on the calendar overview and select it. Then, select the date to start building.

   

3. Name your holiday. This will appear on the calendar overview.
4. Select whether the public holiday will be:
   • State-based
   • Roster location-based, or a
   • National Holiday
     • By selecting state-based, all Operations and rosters outside of that state will automatically be filtered out and not appear in the selections below.
5. Configure the specific rules of the public holiday where applicable
   • Part-day holiday - Enter a specific time frame for when a partial holiday applies.
   • Specific awards - Select the relevant Awards.
   • Specific employees - Select the employees the holiday applies to.
   • Specific operations or rosters - Select the relevant Operations or rosters.
6. Once complete, press Save. You'll now see your public holiday in the Calendar overview in the relevant month.

  Hot tip: To see any specifics about this holiday's configuration, hover your mouse over it. An orange dot will display, indicating specific rulings for this holiday. 

 

Edit or delete a public holiday

If you need to make any amendments to the configuration of the holiday you have just created, hover over it, and you'll have options to:

• Edit and make changes.
• Copy this holiday and its configuration to a new date (covered in the section below).
• Delete and remove from the calendar view.

As you can edit a holiday, it should be rare for you to need to delete one. If you choose to delete, you can 'undo the deletion' briefly via the red pop-up in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.

You can also recreate it or duplicate it from a previous year if you accidentally deleted it.

Regional and additional holidays need to be created each year in your platform.

To aid in this process, you can copy them from year to year which will save you time, while copying, you will be able to edit the details of a holiday as you go. 

To create a public holiday:

1. Locate the relevant public holiday in the calendar overview.
2. Hover over and select the Copy option.
3. Name your holiday. 
4. Select your date using the month, day and year selectors.
5. Tailor any of the specific rulings for your new public holiday and press Save once complete.

  Hot tip:  Once you've finished, go to the roster that should include the holiday you just copied to verify that it has been added successfully.

The image below follows an example of copying a holiday from one year to the next, as well as making a minor edit by adding a new Operation acquired in the recent year.

The following FAQ questions focus on the configuration of public holidays. Should you have questions or concerns about Rostering & Approving shifts on public holidays, please refer to the relevant section in this guide.

We have a state holiday approaching. Should I add this to my platform since it’s not a national public holiday?

If it's a state-based holiday, don't worry, we have this covered! You only need to add in the regional public holidays that are generally unique to a shire, suburb or postcode!

We have employees in our business who observe the regional holiday on separate days due to where they live. What is the best way to manage this situation in my platform?

For example, if Group A observe the holiday on the Monday and Group B on Wednesday.

In this case, we would suggest adding 2 separate regional public holidays on the relevant dates and attributing each holiday to the relevant group of employees.

It's also a good idea to double-check that you haven't missed any employees or attributed any employees to both holidays.

I forgot to add a regional public holiday to my platform. The date has now passed; how can I resolve this? Is the process different if I have already processed pay?

If you have processed pay already, for any affected employees, you'll need to edit each payslip or create an adjustment, to reflect the correct pay for that public holiday.

If your payslips are still in draft:

• Go in and add in your regional public holiday Payroll settings> Public Holidays. Use the above Help article to do so.
• Your payslips should automatically reprocess and apply the public holiday. 

When will the public holidays be added to my platform for next year? I am curious, as my employees are already applying for leave around public holidays for the upcoming year.

We will automatically add these in for you around September each year for the upcoming calendar year! This may seem a bit late, however, we need to wait for the government to 'release' these public holidays officially before we can load them into your platform.

Once future public holidays are added to your platform, your employee's leave applications will be automatically adjusted to accommodate the public holidays (where applicable).

If you want to check which holidays have been added, navigate to the main menu > Payroll settings > Public Holidays. Use the calendar view to navigate to the relevant year and month.