Annual Leave Groups

Selecting Groups > Annual Leave Groups from the Maintenance menu opens a window that allows you to set award-based rules and then place employees in their appropriate group/award. This grouping enables automatic roll-overs into an employee's next entitlement and also lets you split accumulating annual leave where the annual leave entitlement has changed over the course of an annual leave year.

This topic describes the new leave entitlement management functions. Click here for documentation on the old functions.

You are able to define groups of annual leave that allow for different calculations. These groups are then attached to an employee at the individual employee level in the employee's masterfiles. This means that you could have an employee starting at 160 hours entitlement. After 72 months (6 years) service the employee's entitlement goes up to 200 hours.

These entitlements are automatically given to the employee on the appropriate service anniversaries.

If you have a company anniversary, you are also able to split the accumulation of annual leave over an annual leave pay year. This means that you are able to have a company anniversary of, for example, the 25th of December but an employee who starts in July. On the anniversary of the employee's 6th year of service they are now able to accumulate 160 hours pro-rata from the 25th of December through to July and 200 hours pro-rata from July through to December. Or you may have the normal method of an employee accumulating 200 hours based over the entire annual leave year.

Annual Leave Groups are added and edited using the following window:

Group Code Enter the Group code number that you want to use.

Description Enter a name to label this Group code number.

Annual Leave Method Select from the following accrual methods:

• Calendar - This method accrues leave on the basis of days worked as they accumulate across a theoretical "calendar of pay periods". The calculation works by gauging the difference, in actual days of the week, between the employee's start date (or last anniversary date, if they have one) and the employee's pay period end date. The difference in days is proportioned against the number of days in one year (365 or 366 for a leap year), and is then multiplied by the annual entitlement hours in order to arrive at a year-to-date accrual.
  
  For example, assume an entitlement of 160 hours. Having worked six months of a year, an employee will have accrued 80 hours. After having worked an entire year, the employee will have accrued the full 160 hours.

• Hours - Unlike the Calendar method, this method accrues leave based on the employee's actual hours of work.

  If an employee is part time and does not work a set number of days per week, MYOB recommends the Hours method. This method applies the number of actual hours paid against a standard working year (usually 1976 hours), to find a proportion of the year worked. It then applies that same proportion against the full timer's standard yearly entitlement (usually 160 hours).

  Examples:

  Hours Paid = 1976 - Employee receives 1976/1976 x 160 hours
  = 1.000 x 160 hours
  = 160 entitled hours of holiday

  Hours Paid = 1520 - Employee receives 1520/1976 x 160 hours
  = 0.769 x 160
  = 123.04 entitled hours of holiday

  Hours Paid = 988 - Employee receives 988/1976 x 160 hours
  = 0.5 x 160
  = 80 entitled hours of holiday

Leave Loading % Enter the leave percentage rate of the award here, e.g. 17.50 for 17.5%. When paying outstanding annual leave, the value of the annual leave taken will be increased by the percentage stated in this window.

Cap Accruals Per Pay Period When using the Hours method, it is possible for employees to accrue more than their entitled leave if they work more than the Standard Hours set on the Employee Details tab. Tick this option to prevent the employee from accruing more than their entitled leave.

Where leave is paid for multiple pay periods, the cap can be extended for a particular pay by altering the Number of Periods to Tax Over value on the Annual leave tab of the Leave Management window.

Full Time Hours Per Year This field is only required for the Hours method. Specify the hours that the employee would theoretically be paid for if they were to work full-time for the whole year (this is usually 1976 hours). The system will ratio the actual hours paid against the full-time hours paid in order to calculate the proportion of the year worked and in turn hours to pay, at the end of the year.

Click the Add button to add a new entitlement change, or select an existing change and click Edit to change its details.

Months after Start Date Enter the number of months after an employee's start date that the first change in their Annual Leave will take place. Accrual usually commences as of the employee's start date; for the initial entitlement, this value should therefore be set to 0 months. Set this value to a specific number months only if a new accrual line is needed to cover a change in accrual rate during the employment period. The accrual will be carried over based on the anniversary of either the employee's start date or the company anniversary date, if there is one.

Period Entitlement Enter the number of hours the employee is to receive on their entitlement date.

Once you have defined your annual leave group all that is required is to allot the appropriate group to the individual employee. This is done from the Leave Entitlements tab of the Employee Maintenance window.