How holiday builds up

This page describes the sums the app does. It is not advice about what anyone is owed: the rules a balance is worked out from are the ones your restaurant has set.

The balance in one line

Hours left = earned so far + carried over − taken − booked. Everything is kept in hours. Days are those hours divided by the hours a day on the person’s most recent holiday request, or by 8 if they have not made one.

• Taken is approved holiday on days that have passed.
• Booked is approved holiday still to come.
• Waiting is holiday asked for and not yet answered. It is shown, not taken off.

Only requests of the type Holiday count. Sick, Personal and Unpaid time off never touch the balance.

The leave year

A balance covers one leave year: twelve months from the first of the month your location has chosen, January unless it was changed. The screens name it by the year it starts in, such as “2026”, or “Apr 2026 – Mar 2027”. A holiday that runs across the end of a leave year is split: each day counts in the year it falls in.

The leave year and the rules are those of the person’s home location.

Which way a person’s holiday builds

The app takes the first of these that applies:

1. A figure typed on the person as hours a year. The screens call this “Set on person”.
2. A choice made for the person under Builds: fixed hours, or irregular hours.
3. Their contract. Zero hours builds from hours worked. Contracted hours a week are fixed hours. Full time with no hours given is treated as a 40-hour week.
4. With no contract on file, how they are paid. A salary is treated as a 40-hour week. An hourly rate builds from hours worked.

Fixed hours

The year’s holiday is the location’s weeks a year multiplied by the contracted week. At 5.6 weeks, a 40-hour contract is 224 hours. The whole figure is in the balance from the start of the leave year.

If the person’s start date or last day falls inside the leave year, they get the share of the year they are employed for, counted in calendar days. The log shows it as, for example, “Entitlement from 5 Oct” with “24.11% of the year”.

Hours worked

Where the location builds irregular hours by hours worked, holiday is a percentage of the hours on the person’s approved timesheets. At 5.6 weeks a year the percentage is 12.07%.

• It is added up one pay period at a time, weekly or monthly as the location is set, and each period’s holiday is rounded to the nearest hour. A period with any hours in it gives at least half an hour.
• The period under way counts as it goes, and its figure is final when the period ends.
• Only approved timesheets count. Hours clocked and still waiting for a manager are shown beside the balance as waiting on approval, and added when they are approved.
• Hours are paid hours: unpaid breaks are taken off.
• The rota is never counted, only what was worked. A draft rota cannot change a balance.

Average week

Where the location builds irregular hours by average week, the year’s holiday is the weeks a year multiplied by the person’s average week. The average is over the last 52 weeks they worked in, looking back up to 104 weeks and leaving out weeks with no work. It is shared by the part of the leave year they are employed for, like fixed hours. The screens call this “Calendar week” or “5.6 × average week”.

What a request costs

Each day asked for costs the hours a day on the request. For someone with a contracted week, a request never costs more than that week in any seven days, so a request can run across days off without paying for them. Without a contracted week it is the hours asked.

Carried over

At the start of a leave year, what was left from the year before comes over, up to the number of days the location carries. If the location carries none, nothing comes over. Nothing comes over from a year the app kept no balance for.

Brought in from another system

A manager can record what a person had earned and taken elsewhere up to the day the app took over. From that date the app’s own counting adds to it. It shows on the balance and in the log as “Brought in”.

Holiday pay beside a request

People who can see pay are shown what a holiday request will be paid. The app says what the figure is worked from where it is not a full year’s average: “Salary”, “Rate × contract hours”, “At current rate”, or the number of weeks an average is over, such as “12-week average”. Approved holiday is also included, a day at a time, in the timesheet export and on the Payroll page: see Export timesheets for payroll.