Employee holiday and accruals are confusing for everyone, but we try and make it as straight forward as possible. Below is a breakdown of all the information contained within the Current Holiday Year Summary info-box on each employee's Holiday Module within Staff Maintenance.
MAX ANNUAL ENTITLEMENT: This is the MAXIMUM number of days an employee is able to accrue in the current holiday year. It's calculated based on their employment start date. So if the employee started employment before the start of the holiday year, their Max Annual Entitlement would be 28 days by default (this is the statutory annual allowance according to HMRC; 5.6 weeks, converted into days).
(Max Annual entitlements can be increased for individual employees if your company policy differs to the statutory value of 28 days)
EQUIVALENT ANNUAL ENTITLEMENT: This is the pro-rated number of days the employee will earn to the end of the holiday year based on their working patterns of the last 52 worked weeks. As such this will fluctuate from week to week if an employee's working days vary from week to week.
A full time, salaried employee would have an Equivalent Annual Entitlement that matches the Max Annual Entitlement as they're on a fixed contract.
The Equivalent Entitlement for an HOURLY paid employee on variable hours is calculated by taking the Avg. Worked Days/Week value and multiplying this by 5.6 week allowance. The Avg days worked/week is calculated using data from the last 52 WORKED weeks (i.e. ignoring any absences/holiday weeks), as advised by HMRC (or less if the employee has not been with the business for that amount of time).
If a variable employee's working pattern changes, so will the Equivalent Annual Entitlement
ACCRUED TO DATE: This is the number of days the employees has accrued up to the end of the last confirmed week on Polaris Data.
For Salaried employees, these accruals are a fixed amount per day based on the Max Annual Entitlement (i.e. someone working 5 days a week would be entitled to 28 days holiday)
For Hourly employees - these accruals are anything accrued when the employee has worked.
ADJUSTMENT DAYS: This is the number of days that may have been added (or deducted) from the current year's holiday accrual. I.E. There's an exceptional circumstance where holiday days were not able to be taken in the previous holiday year, so have been carried forward to the current year in order for the employee to be able to take these days without being penalised.
BOOKED HOLIDAY: Any holiday days that have been approved that are future dates within the current holiday year.
(These are NOT taken into account in HOLIDAYS LEFT TO TAKE until they are days that have passed and they become TAKEN HOLIDAY; as there could be circumstances where these days don't end up being taken)
TAKEN HOLIDAY: Any holiday days in the current holiday year that the employee has taken.
HOLIDAYS LEFT TO TAKE: This is simply the balance of days left to take at the current point in the holiday year. ACCRUED TO DATE - TAKEN HOLIDAY.
AVERAGE DAILY RATE: This is the employee's holiday daily rate.
For HOURLY paid employees it's calculated based on average earnings and days worked in the last 52 worked weeks to give an Average Daily Rate (or less if the employee has not been with the business for that amount of time).
This will fluctuate throughout the year if the employee's working patterns change. This is capped at looking back at averages over a maximum of 104 TOTAL weeks (i.e. if an employee has physically worked less than 52 weeks within that 104 week window - it will take an average of the total number of weeks they have worked)
For SALARIED employees, it takes the employee's weekly salary equivalent (take their yearly salary and divide by 52 weeks to give a weekly salary cost), then divides that by a 5 day working week to give a daily rate.
E.G. Salary = £26000. The weekly equivalent would be £500 (£26000 / 52); and therefore the daily rate would be £100 per day.
HOLIDAY BALANCE: This is the Average Daily Rate multiplied by the Holidays Left to Take.
N.B. - Polaris Data will allow an employee to take holiday days BEFORE they are accrued. It is down to the management to be responsible for his/her staff holidays, to ensure that if they DO take holiday before it's accrued (and get paid for it), that they will be back to accrue that holiday before the end of the year.