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Changing a holiday allowance unit type

Changing Holiday allowance types from days to hours or hours to days

Emma Johnson avatar
Written by Emma Johnson
Updated over 3 weeks ago

This guide is for Admin users


If you need to change your team member's holiday allowance from days to hours (or hours to days), there are two options.

Option One: Recommended

Step 1: Accessing the Holiday Allowances Settings

To begin, navigate to the holiday allowances menu in the More tab in your employee's profile.

Employee Profile > More Tab > Working pattern and Holiday allowances

In the overview tab, you will see the Change Holiday Allowance box

The Blue box underneath the green update button will inform you which holiday allowance type they are currently on.

Press the Click here option to change the allowance type

Step 2: Proceed with the holiday allowance unit change

Press the green Proceed button to begin the unit change process.

Please note that once this process has been completed, you will not be able to modify leave for previous holiday years. This action cannot be undone and is final.

You will now be taken to the Convert holiday units page.

Important: While this process is being completed, the employee will not be able to request a holiday. To discontinue this process, please click the cancel button rather than using the back arrow; otherwise, the employee will remain locked.

Step 3: Select their new holiday allowance

Choose the employee's new holiday allowance from the drop-down menu. If no options to choose from appear, this will mean that you need to create a new holiday allowance for them in the correct unit type (such as hours)

Step 4: Carry over

Once you have selected the allowance, you will need to convert the carryover amount to apply from their previous holiday year.

If the previous value (days) box states 0, this means you should add 0 in the new value box, as this will they do not have carryover from their previous holiday year.

Please note that when entering a value in the hours from the drop-down box, you will see minutes in 0.25 increments rather than 0.15 increments.

Important: If you type in the value, please enter minutes in increments of 0.25

Step 5: Convert previously booked holiday

The last step is to convert their previously booked leave for your current holiday year.

You will be presented with a list of their holiday dates. This will cover...

  • Working time lost

  • Allowance used in current year

  • Allowance used in next year

  • Half-day start hours

  • Half-day end hours

You are required to calculate these figures and enter them into the white boxes under these headers.

In the example below, their Holiday allowance was in days, their leave booking was 9 days, for a 7.5-hour day this equates to 67.50 hours

Step 6: Press Change Holiday units for this employee

Press the Green " Change Holiday units for this employee" button.

You will be shown a warning asking if you are sure you would like to convert these records to hours

Press confirm to finalise the process


Option Two: Purge Data option (not recommended)

Please note: Step 3 in this guide (the data purge) can only be actioned by the Admin user on your Breathe account.

Step 1: Create the new holiday allowance 

Firstly, you'll need to create a new holiday allowance for your employee.

You can do this by navigating to Configure > Settings > Absence settings > Holiday Allowances > Add New

Step 2: Record existing holiday data

To do this, click on the employee's profile > Leave tab.

Run the relevant reports and export them for the person's requested, booked, taken holidays, and any adjustments.

To do this, head to the Reports menu and select Absence reports...

Please note: Remember to include data for all years, as this data will need to be manually added back in.

Step 3: Purge the user's data (Admin user only)

To change the employee's holiday from days to hours, their existing holiday will need to be removed to make this switch.

But we don't want you to lose your data, so in this step, we advise that it's important to make a record of the data you're removing.

Purging data means permanently deleting data from a user's profile, such as holiday records. This step can only be performed by an Admin user. This action removes all data related to holidays, past and present.

Purged data is non-recoverable, so please ensure all necessary data is recorded.

To complete a data purge, the Breathe Admin user will need to head to: People > Data > Purge > Data Purge

Can't see the purge screen? This may be because you're not the Admin user of your account.

Please note: If you are a client of a Breathe Partner, your Partner contact will be your listed admin user.

For more information on purging data, check out the guide below:

Step 4: Select user and data to delete

Breathe will ask you if you are sure you wish to proceed with the purge, as this action will permanently delete this data (which isn't recoverable).

Once you're happy that you've recorded all the information you need to, you can proceed with the deletion.

Step 5: Assign the hourly (or daily) allowance to the user

To do this, navigate to: People > Profile > More tab > Work pattern and holiday allowances > Assign the new allowance

Step 6: Re-add the user's holiday

Go back to the person's profile > click on the Leave tab > select Add New (+) to re-enter their holiday details.

FAQs for option two

Why can't I see the option to purge data?

  • Only the Admin user can purge data within the account.

  • The person in question may have no data to purge.

Why is the new leave allowance not showing?

  • This could be due to existing holiday data not being purged, causing a conflict.

  • If the allowance is currently set in days, you won't be able to assign an hourly allowance until the data is purged.

We're here to help. Any further questions? Simply drop us a message using the messaging feature at the bottom right of your screen 💬

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