🎯 For admins and HR managers in the UK looking to set up leave.
This changeover process is specifically for switching to the new Calendar Week Method for accruing UK leave, but the process will apply in other circumstances, such as changing from the old leave account module to the new leave module.
💡 Note: Depending on the language setting on your profile, references to Leave below may appear as Absence in your Planday organisation. These terms both refer to the same thing in Planday.
Step 1: Create the new leave account template
Create the new leave account template by navigating to Settings > Leave & Overtime > Account Templates and clicking the blue Create button.
Fill out the settings for the new template, referring to your old account template for guidance on what settings to use or read How to set up accrued Absence accounts article. To use the new Calendar Week Method for accrual, use the following settings under Accrual policy and Shift types sections instead of your old settings.
In the Accrual policy section, select the following settings to use the new Calendar Week Method:
Accrual rate: Average working week (Calendar week method)
Monetary payout: 52 week reference period (Calendar week method) for the default weekly earnings average, or hourly wage to use each individual employee’s hourly rate.
In the Shift types section, select the shift types that are to be considered working shifts and included in the calculation. A week with one or more shifts using any of the shift types selected here will count towards the calculation and accrue leave. Any week that consists exclusively of shift types that are not selected here will not be included in the calculation and will not accrue leave.
In the above example, the shift types Normal, Meeting, Overtime, Salaried Overtime, and Training will all be included in the calculation and accrue leave. The shift types Leave Without Pay, Off Sick, and Statutory Sick Pay will not count towards the calculation and any week that exclusively has these shift types will be skipped entirely by the calculation.
Step 2: Create new leave accounts based on the new template created at step 1
Create the new leave accounts by navigating to Schedule > Leave accounts and clicking the blue Apply template button.
Click Apply account template to multiple employees.
Select the account template you created in step 1 from the Account name list and click Next.
In this screen you can limit who will get the new accounts by department or employee type in the Assign section if necessary. In the Start Date section, set this to Same start date for all employees and use the first day of your new leave year. All other settings have defaults that are pulled from the account template created at step 1 and can be left as they are.
Click Save. You will see a message pop up at the bottom of the screen advising how many accounts were just created.
Step 3: Transfer any future leave requests to the new accounts
Planday will by default create two leave accounts for each employee, one for the current leave year and another for the next leave year to allow future leave requests to be submitted. Since we are changing over to new leave accounts, any leave requests submitted for next leave year against the old accounts will need to be denied and re-submitted against the new account created at step 2.
To assist this step and to have a record of these requests, export a report of leave requests for next leave year by navigating to Schedule > Leave requests, then Export > Leave report. In the new window:
Set the dates for the next leave year (e.g. 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024).
Untick the Denied status.
Tick Show details for a more detailed breakdown of each leave request, or leave it unticked to just see the date range of the requests.
Click the green Print Report button and once it has loaded, click the Download File link that appears next to the Close link. This is your excel leave request report.
Re-enter, or have the employees re-enter, the future leave requests making sure to choose the new leave accounts created at step 2. You can do this by navigating to Schedule > Leave requests, clicking the blue Register leavebutton, and following the steps there.
Since you have the report of the leave requests you created earlier, you can now deny all leave requests for next leave year against the accounts we are changing from. This is a necessary step to delete the old accounts and avoid double accruing in both accounts.
Navigate to Schedule > Leave requests.
Set the Period start date to the first day of your next leave year (e.g. 1 April 2023).
Set the status to show both Pending and Approved requests.
Filter to the leave account we are changing from by clicking the Filters button and selecting the old account name in the Account names dropdown.
Once the above filters are set you now have a list of all approved or pending leave requests for next leave year against the account we are changing away from.
Open each leave request in this list and click the red Deny button. In the popup confirmation window untick Send notification to the employee and click the red Deny button again.
Step 4: Delete old Absence accounts
Once all leave requests in the old accounts have been denied in step 3, we can proceed to delete those leave accounts which have been replaced for the next leave year.
Navigate to Schedule > Leave accounts
Set the Period start date to the first day of your next leave year (e.g. 1 April 2023)
Click Filters and choose the old leave account name from the Account names dropdown. This is your list of all accounts for the next leave year from the old account template.
Hover over the first account and click the delete button on the far right. In the popup confirmation window, click the red Delete button. If successful, you will get a message at the bottom of the screen with a tick advising it has been successful. If you get an error here, it is likely there is still an approved or pending leave request for this account that needs to be denied.
Complete:
Once all of the above steps are complete, you have changed over from your old account template to the new account template in time for the new leave year.
Need more help?
Please search for answers in the 🔍 Help Center or watch our ▶️ video tutorials.
Contact our support team via the blue icon at the bottom if you have more questions.
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