Skip to main content
All CollectionsIntegrations
How to use leave with some payroll integrations
How to use leave with some payroll integrations

Use leave with a payroll integration by using Shift types

Anton E avatar
Written by Anton E
Updated this week

🔓 Access level in Planday: Administrator

🌐 Subscription plan: Plus, Pro, Enterprise, All

⏱️ Reading time: 2 min.

When integrating Planday with a payroll system like Xero or Quickbooks, you will need to input holidays a little bit differently. To send leave data over to your payroll system, there will need to be data on the schedule. This will mean creating a shift, marked with a leave Shift type, so it will be sent over to your payroll system.

Here are some steps to follow to make sure leave data is being sent over.


Click on the sections below to expand.

Creating your leave accounts

  • Go to Settings > Leave & Overtime (or Absence, Overtime, Vacation) > Policies and create your leave policies as normal.

  • Then, create leave accounts for your employees, based on these policies. You can use both fixed and accrued accounts, for your salaried and hourly employees. These will still form the basis of your leave system, allowing you to book holidays and keep track of both absence and accrued accounts for your employees.

For more information on this step, check out this guide on creating accrued leave policies or creating fixed policies.


Create a Shift type

Go to Settings > Schedule > Shift types, and create a Shift type to use when creating holiday shifts on the schedule. Give it a name and set the rate to 100%. The salary code is important, as this is what will connect this Shift type to your payroll system. The salary code usually matches the one in your payroll system.

holiday shift type.001.jpeg

Note: You must have the option Count hours in payroll report ticked, or else your leave data may not be transferred to your payroll system.

  • If you’re using the Xero payroll integration, you need to map your Planday holiday shift types to your Xero Leave types. Click here for more details.

Once the Shift type is created, you are ready to apply it to shifts on the Schedule, which will be how we send the holiday data to your payroll system.


Requesting leave

You will use Planday to keep track of your leave balances and your leave requests. All leave requests will come through Planday first, and then on to the payroll system.

The process for both requesting and approving leave will be the same as normal, for both fixed and accrued leave accounts. Leave will be requested by the employee and approved by the manager through Schedule > Leave requests.

For more information on leave requests and approvals, have a look at this guide.

Tip: You can assign a holiday Default Shift type for overlapping shifts in the leave policy’s settings under Settings > Leave & Overtime > Policies.

That way, when you approve the holiday request, Planday will suggest to apply this shift type if shifts were scheduled on the days of the request.


Sending leave data to your payroll system

As the leave request on its own has no links to Payroll, you will need to make that connection through Shifts from your Schedule. That way, the correct payment will register automatically.

Go to the Schedule > Employee view and find the leave request. Remember that you can use Filters to see only the employees you need. The view should look like this:

leave in sched.001.jpeg


​For each day of the leave period (marked in the Schedule), you will need to create a Shift that uses the Shift type you created before.

The Shift will need to have a Start and End time that corresponds to the number of hours deducted from the leave account balance for that day.

In the example with the 40 hours/week employee, each Shift would be 8 hours long.

When you've finished creating Shifts (of the Holiday Shift type), your schedule should look like this:

leave in sched with shift type.001.jpeg

As you can see on the left-hand side, underneath the employee's name, they now have 40 hours of leave time registered for this week, which will automatically be reported to Payroll.


See related articles:

ℹ️ Need more help?

🔍 Search the Help Center | See videos at Tutorials.Planday.com | Watch a webinar

💬 For personalised support

Login and contact our support team via the blue icon at the bottom if you have more questions or book a one-to-one professional training session with an expert.

Did this answer your question?