Apply a new leave entitlement to an employee's profile

Add a new entitlement to an employee's profile

When the need arises, you can provide your employees with additional leave entitlements. Once these entitlements are added to an employee, they will be able to submit leave requests for the new leave type.

For example, once Parental Leave is added to an employee's profile, the employee or admin can then submit a request for Personal Leave.

Adding a new entitlement to an employee involves 2 key steps:

• Ensuring that the entitlement type has been added to your platform's Leave Rules (e.g. Parental Leave rules have been added to your platform). See our guide on setting up entitlement rules here. 
• Adding the entitlement to the employee with the relevant employment type. (e.g. Adding Parental Leave to an eligible employee).

In this article, we will cover: 

• Adding a new entitlement to an employee
• Allowing negative leave balance for individual employees and optionally capping this amount
• How to edit or adjust accrued entitlement hours
• Managing entitlements when employees change employment types, e.g. full-time to casual 

  If you are looking to pay out leave entitlements due to a termination, then please see our Termination Payments help guide here.

Add a new entitlement to an employee

Leave entitlements can be added to your employees' profiles in bulk or on an ad hoc basis. Applying entitlements individually may be necessary for certain leave types, such as parental leave and WorkCover, that do not always apply to all employees.

Before you begin

Prior to updating your employee profile entitlements, you first need to know a few essential things. Please consider the following:

• • You will only see entitlements that you have set up in your platform. If you have not set up the relevant entitlement, please do this first.
  • When adding leave entitlements to casual employees, only available leave types can be selected, i.e. leave entitlements with the 'apply entitlement to permanent/casual employees' toggle on.
  • If you have already added all relevant entitlements for casual employees, you may also receive a warning message reminding you to first add a new entitlement type to your platform. If this is the case, ensure the entitlement you create is set up to apply to casuals. 

  Please note: Leave entitlements accrue from the first pay period assigned to an employee. Balances will not be backdated to the start of employment. Remember to reprocess any draft payslips. If you do, any manual edits already made to the draft payslips may be removed or overridden.

Applying an entitlement to an employee

In the instructions below, we will add a parental leave entitlement for an employee. For the purposes of these instructions, the parental leave entitlement has already been set up in our platform using our Leave entitlements guide.

To add a new entitlement to an employee:

1. Navigate to the employee's profile by searching for the employee or via People > Approved People.
2. In the employee's profile, select Employee Card and open the Employment Type section.
3. Below the position, you will see all entitlements applied against your employee in the Entitlements section. To add a new leave entitlement, select the + Entitlement button. 
   
   

   

4. In the Add entitlement modal, select the relevant entitlement from the drop-down list. Then review and update the details as you require:
   • Override accruals - Enable this option to override the default accrual settings for this entitlement. If this is enabled, please configure the below options as well.
     
     • Accrues per - Select if this leave entitlement accrues for:
       • Ord hrs - Only accrues on ordinary hours worked. 
       • All hrs - Accrues on ordinary and overtime hours worked. 
     • Accrues at - Override the default and apply a new per-hour accrual rate for the entitlement. 
     • Leave loading - The loading percentage applied to this entitlement. The value input here will be used instead of the loading rate applied in the award. 
   • Allow Advanced/ Negative Accrual - Turn on to allow an employee to redeem leave exceeding their balance.
     • Cap employee's negative leave balance at - Select a maximum negative leave balance the employee cannot exceed.
   • Override Pay Rate - The pay rate (excluding leave loading) at which this entitlement will be paid.
     • Once enabled, set the new rate in the 'Custom pay rate' field.
     • When left disabled, the entitlement will pay at the employee's primary position base rate.
   • Override leave loading - Enable this option to specify a specific leave loading percentage different to the leave loading amount in the award. This will allow you to enter a new percentage in the field above.
   • Accrual limit per payslip - Sets the maximum hours a leave type can accrue per payslip. 
   • Accrual minimum per payslip - Sets the minimum hours a leave type can accrue per payslip. 
   • Accrued Amount - Add the employee's existing leave balance (in hours) for the relevant entitlement. 
     
     

     

5. Select 'Add & Review Entitlement', then add any additional leave entitlements. Once all leave types have been added, select Save. 
   
   

   

6. The newly added entitlement will now display with the employees existing entitlements ready for use. 
   
   

   

  Hot tip: When you override an employee's Default Entitlement Value or Default Leave Loading, you can see this change from their profile as it will be highlighted by an orange dot. 

  If you would like more information on Paid Parental Leave, see our helpful Paid Parental Leave help guide here.  

Allow a negative leave balance for individual employees

When an employee submits a leave application, they can request any available leave type, even if their balance is insufficient. However, during the application process, they will be informed that they do not have sufficient leave, and if approved, they will be paid up to the amount they have in their balance, while the remainder will be unpaid.

The one exception is if you enable the 'Allow Advanced/ Negative Accrual' toggle within the employee's leave entitlement. If switched on, the employee may redeem an amount exceeding their balance. If this leave is approved, their balance will become negative. Additionally, this balance can be capped to prevent excessive negative leave redemption. 

Many employers will allow negative leave in the following circumstances:

• • Compulsory closures over Christmas and extended holiday periods.
  • For long-term employees, there may be the assumption that the balance will eventually return to zero or be positive in a short amount of time.
  • To promote good work/life balance, employers may advance or loan their employees leave to enjoy the paid time off they take before they have earned it.
  • For extensive periods of leave. 

If you would like to configure certain entitlements to go into negative as well as apply a cap, this can be done for:

• Multiple employees by importing in bulk using the Employee Entitlements CSV.
• Single employees via their employee profile.

  Below, we explain the instructions for enabling negative leave for a single employee; if you would like to do this in bulk, please refer to this guide.

To allow an employee to go into a negative leave balance: 

1. Navigate to the employee's profile by searching for the employee or via People > Approved People.
2. Select Employee Card in the employee's profile and open the Employment Type section. Below the position, you will see the existing entitlements. 
3. Select the pencil icon to edit the relevant entitlement.
4. Turn on the 'Allow Advanced/ Negative Accrual' toggle and Save. 
5. Optionally, you can cap the amount that the employee can go into negative leave.

The negative balance on the entitlement overview will now be shown in green, and the negative capped amount will be displayed for this employee.

The employee will now be able to go into a negative leave balance for this leave entitlement. 

  Please note: When terminating an employee, if they have a negative leave balance, their payslip will be blocked. A deduction may need to be applied to recoup any funds. 

Editing or adjusting an employee's leave entitlement balances

An employee's leave balance will update automatically each time a payslip is generated. You can also manually update an employee's leave entitlements when necessary.

Some circumstances may include:

• • Transferring an employee between platforms.
  • Adding WorkCover or Paid Parental leave types.
  • Adding a bonus leave or other incentive leave types. 

How to update an employee's leave entitlement balance:

1. Navigate to the employee's profile by searching for the employee or via People > Approved People.
2. Select Employee Card in the employee's profile and open the Employment Type section. Below the position, you will see the existing entitlements. 
3. Select the pencil icon to edit the relevant entitlement.
   
   

   

4. Add the required hours to the 'Leave balance' field.
   
   

   

5. You'll now see the updated accrued hours in the entitlements section.
   
   

   

Employees going from full-time to casual & managing their entitlements

There may be times in your business when a full-time employee transitions to casual employment; during this process, you will need to manage their existing leave entitlements. 

For example, pay out Annual Leave, delete Personal Leave, and carry over Long Service Leave to their casual position.

When you add in the new position details, during the workflow, you will be prompted asking you how you would like to manage their entitlements.

  For further reading on transitioning an employee from permanent to casual, please refer to this article. 

To finalise entitlements for a full-time employee going to casual:

1. In the employee's profile > Employee Card, select  + New Position.
2. In the workflow, select Casual, then fill in the appropriate position details. Once added, select + Add & Review Position, then Next to continue.
3. In the Entitlements section, you will see the existing entitlements for this employee. For each leave type, select the appropriate option: 
   
   • Pay Out  - Cashes out the entitlements on the employee's draft payslip, e.g. Annual Leave. 
   • Carry Over -  Leave continues to accrue for the casual position, e.g. Long Service Leave. 
     
     When selecting this option, you will need to specify a casual position from which this leave type is to be paid upon redemption. 
     
     
   • Delete - Deletes the leave type from the employee's profile, e.g. Personal Leave. 
     
       Hot tip: When transferring an employee from permanent to casual, only leave types available for casuals can carried over. If a leave type's Carry Over option is greyed out, check that the leave type has been set up to apply to casual employees.
     
     

4. To continue, select Next and complete the workflow.

When you navigate back to the Employee Card > Employment Type and scroll down to the Entitlements area, you will notice the orange 'Pay Out' badge and 'Delete' badge over the entitlements chosen to be paid out or deleted. 

  Please note: The payout process will occur in the payslip for the final period ending before the employee becomes casual. If no draft payslip is created in that period through approving times or leave, a manual payslip will need to be created.