We've got a whole lot of new features ready for you this month. Let's dive right in:

The Planday System Holiday Calendar has been updated with the upcoming Bank Holidays, spanning now until 2025.
To update the calendar on your portal, you'll need to add the new days to your own calendar, from Settings > Portal settings > Bank Holiday calendar.
Here, you can either extend the calendar you currently use until the 31st of December 2025 or add a new calendar starting on the 1st of January 2021 and ending on 31st of December 2025).
Then simply import the Holiday calendar dates from the System calendar from the Add button on the right side.
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Select the available calendar (2021-2025) to copy from and set the date from the 1st of January 2021, then click Add.

As a reminder, the Bank Holidays can be shown in your Schedule ( from Schedule > Views > Bank holidays/Vacations) and can be useful when calculating vacation request costs.
​You can read more about Holiday Calendars and set one up, in this article.
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You can now get a broad overview of your schedule, with the new Shift status overview page that will gather information about all your shifts. This can be useful, if you need to get a quick picture of how your Schedule looks like on a daily basis, for a particular department.
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You can filter the view to display either one of the available shift statuses (open, assigned, for sale, and approved), for your selected Departments. You can also switch between scheduled weeks, on the same page.
​Please note that the visibility of Shifts on the overview page requires the same permission levels as Shifts in Schedule or Department information (learn more about permissions).
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The overview page can be found in Schedule > Tools > Shift overview.
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Until recently, Breaks were not considered in calculating Manual Payroll supplements, even if the "Affected by Breaks" setting was enabled. This means that Breaks were not correctly deducted from the supplement, which could have lead to incorrect costs for payroll. This issue has now been fixed, and the Manual Payroll supplement page will reflect the accurate behavior.
This means that the recent update will correctly show the Affected by Breaks setting disabled, for your Manual Payroll Supplements.
In order to enable it, simply edit your supplement settings from Settings > Payroll > Payroll Supplements > and find the edit icon (✏️) for your Manual supplement, in its section.
​Please make sure to specify a correct date range and payment period, to avoid payroll inconsistencies (read more about Payroll supplements in this article).
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Planday is now also available in Finnish (Suomi). You change the language settings for your profile menu on the web client, you can Edit your profile settings from the top right corner menu.

Then simply select your preferred language and click Save.
​Support for Finnish will also be available on the Planday App, in the upcoming versions.
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Vacation management in Planday has been gradually improved over the last few months, a process that continues this month with:

1. added support for free input field for accruing rate, when setting up an Accrued vacation account

The accruing rate setting changed from a series of preset options in a dropdown menu to a free input field, to accommodate custom configurations and avoid confusion. You can now type in the rate you need, with up to 4 decimal points.
​Read more about how to set up Accrued vacation accounts and commonly used percentage rates, in this article.
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2. Added support for requesting vacation on behalf of an employee & requesting vacation from web

In some cases, you might need to create a vacation request on behalf of an employee and with the new update, you can do so in 2 ways:
- either from People > Employees > select the employee > Edit employee (✏️) > Vacation > + Add;
- or from Schedule > Absence requests > Request vacation > select the employee.
and follow the necessary for requesting vacation.
​More details about how to request can be found in this article.
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Once you've created the vacation request, remember to Approve it so your records are accurate.
You can find the vacation request later, under Schedule > Absence requests, if you need to.
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At the same time, your employees can also request vacation from the web platform when they need to.
In a similar way, they would apply for Time off through the app, your employees can do so from Home > Your vacation > Request vacation.
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3. Support for editing vacation requests

Whether you need to modify an already approved or denied a vacation request from an employee or just need to change some details, you now have full control when managing vacation requests.
To edit requests, navigate to Schedule > Absence requests > find the request you need and tap on the edit icon on the right (✏️).
​Please note that while you can edit past vacation requests, this is limited to a maximum of 1 month back, to avoid payroll inconsistencies.

4. updated Schedule > Absence requests page

The list of Absence requests can grow large very fast and that can make it inconvenient to search through. We've added more filters to help you narrow down your search:

5. Monetary value and vacation balance now shown when editing an employee's Absence account

A monetary estimate of the vacation balance an employee has left on their Absence account (or has accrued to date) can be found on an employee's assigned Vacation account, under Schedule > Absence accounts.
This estimate is calculated based on your set configuration for Vacation Earnings, on the Absence account template.
​You can see and edit this from Settings > Absence, Overtime, Vacation > Edit (✏️) for that Absence account.
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The blue line on the Absence account highlights both the monetary estimate of the vacation balance and the vacation balance available to date, as additional information.
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6.Reports for Vacation requests and Overtime requests

Exporting requests report is once again available, in the formats you are already familiar with.
To pull a vacation request report or overtime request report, simply navigate to Schedule > Absence requests > Export in the top right corner and pick the report you want.
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7. Calendar view for Absence requests page

You can get a better overview of the approved, denied and upcoming requests in a brand new calendar view ( from the dropdown menu in the top right corner, under Schedule > Absence requests).
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The calendar view can be filtered like the List view, and requires a date range to be set, showing full weeks from the start to the end date you selected. The status of a request is color-coded and each request can be opened directly from the calendar.
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Hogia offers a Payroll solution, and as an ongoing partnership with Planday, the Hogia required Personal and employment data file format is now available. This improves the employee management between the 2 systems, by allowing managers to keep their records up to date through a simple export/import process from Planday to Hogia.
​Read more about the Personal and employment data report, in our setup guide.
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Make sure to use the latest versions available for Android (6.9.0) or iOS (6.9.0).
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We are constantly working on improving your experience with the Planday App, so the recent update brings you behind-the-scenes performance and experience improvements, including:

​With the upcoming version (6.10.0 - not yet available) for the Planday app, Punch Clock will include support for an automated survey before starting a shift. This might be necessary for your organization, due to the COVID-19 restrictions.