How to Manage Public Holidays

This guide is going to go over how to manage Public Holidays. Everything mentioned in this guide is powered with our statutory pay calculator, this will take in consideration if public holidays fall on weekends and if employees are eligible to receive an Alternative Holiday.

Table of Contents


  1. Video Instructions On Statutory Calculator
  2. Written Instructions On Statutory Calculator
  3. Adding Worked Hours and Alternative Holidays

Note: Ensure that you carefully follow the guide below to stay compliant to the Holidays Act 2003.

Video Instructions on Statutory Calculator


This video will teach you how to use our calculator tool to work out if an employee is eligible for a paid day off or not, and should always be the first step when processing a public holiday.


Watch our video instructions.

Do note that: After you run the statutory pay calculator, you will also want to add worked hours to the employee's public holidays' entries if this is relevant. Click here.

Written Instructions on Statutory Calculator


Go to “Process a Pay”, and then “Time & Income”.

When there is a public holiday that falls in the current period. This “P.H.” button will appear (will not show if there is no Public Holiday).

Clicking this button will open this menu.

First “Select a Public Holiday”.

For "Regular Employees" (has default hours on the day of the public holiday).

"Regular Employees" generally should be paid their "Relevant Daily Pay".

With exception to employees who receive other income such as call-outs, commissions, and any other gross earnings payments, then "Average Daily Pay" should be used instead.

"Irregular Employees" should be paid their "Average Daily Pay."

These are the amounts employees should be paid when they take the day off due to a public holiday.

Once you have selected either "Relevant Daily Pay" or "Average Daily Pay".

Tick the "Accept" box at the top and the statutory pay will be loaded for you on the “Time & Income” screen.

Do note that: If any employees worked on the public holidays you must enter manually the hours they worked in the now existing public holiday entry.

Adding Worked Hours and Alternative Holidays


After accepting the statutory pay, this will generate the public holiday entries for all the employees accepted automatically.

After this, you may also need to add in worked hours, or if the employee did not receive any entry for the public holiday (as they were not eligible for it), manually add the entry in.

Adding hours for an employee who has a public holiday entry in their timesheet:


Click the date on the left hand side of the table itself, to edit the entry.

Enter in the hours the employee worked into the "Worked Hours" entry.

When the employee does work on the public holiday and it is also an "Otherwise Working Day", they are to receive an Alternative Holiday/Day in Lieu.

The system recognises this and adds it automatically when both "Worked Hours" and "Default Hours" fields are filled.

Adding hours for an employee who does not have a public holiday entry in their timesheet:


Secondly, to add the entry manually due to not being eligible from the automatic statutory pay.

Click on the blank white box at the top to the right of "Date" and enter the Public Holiday date.

Enter the "Worked Hours" as the hours worked and leave the "Default Hours" blank.