Leave Version 1 (Old Leave System)
The information below relates to version 1 of the leave system, which applies to all accounts created before 3 September 2016 that have not been migrated to the latest version of the leave system.
If, however, you are already using the latest version of the leave system, you can find helpful information in the following section:
Latest version of leave system
To benefit from all the newest functionality of our leave system, such as the ability to display leave in hours, please ensure that you are using the latest version. If you are unsure of what version you are using or want to migrate to the latest one, please contact our Support team.
Recording Leave Taken¶
Payroll Administrators can record leave taken by employees by capturing the days on a calendar linked to the employee’s profile. This can be done as follows:
- Go to an employee’s profile, and click on Record Leave Taken.
- Click on the day on which the employee is taking / took leave.
- Select the leave Type from the drop-down menu.
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Edit the To date if the employee is taking / took more than one day.
Automatic inclusions and exclusions
- Public holidays will be excluded from these dates automatically.
- Weekends will be excluded for employees on a Fixed schedule unless weekends form part of their Regular Working Days.
- Weekends will be included for employees on a Casual / Temp schedule.
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Click Confirm to the right of the calendar.
- If you have finished recording leave, click Save; otherwise, repeat the steps above to record additional leave.
Hourly paid employees will be paid for leave taken while salaried employees generally won’t be paid extra when they take leave – their leave pay is included in their salary as the amount is fixed. More information about leave pay can be found in the following article:
Future-dated leave
Only leave days recorded for the current or previous periods are taken into account. In other words, future-dated leave will be counted only on the payslip of the period to which the leave relates.
With regard to leave days for previous periods, please note that all aspects of historic leave captured during the current month will reflect on the current month’s payslip. For example, if you’re busy creating the payslip for March 2025, and you record leave for December 2024, the leave days taken and any associated pay will reflect on the March 2025 payslip.
Leave Take-On Balances¶
The following process should be followed to enter take-on balances for leave, in cases where you previously used another payroll system or captured leave off-system, e.g. in a spreadsheet:
- Go to an employee’s profile, and click on Take-On Balances.
- Click on Edit Balances at the bottom of the screen.
- You can then enter take-on balances for annual, sick, and compassionate leave at the top of the screen.
- Click Save at the bottom of the screen.
Leave take-on balances
You will be able to enter/edit leave take-on balances as described above only while there are not yet any finalised payslips for the employee. Once you have finalised a payslip for the employee, you need to enter the leave take-on balances by doing a Leave Adjustment (discussed below).
Leave Adjustments¶
If you started using SimplePay without capturing the correct leave take-on balances or need to do some other type of adjustment to leave balances, you can make use of the Leave Adjustments functionality. It will enable you to make changes to the balances at any time during the year, even after finalising your first payslip.
Leave adjustments
You will be able to enter positive and negative adjustments. Positive adjustments will increase the balance of that leave type, while negative adjustments will decrease the balance.
To make adjustments to employees individually:
- Go to an employee’s profile, and click on Add next to Payslip Inputs.
- Click on Leave Adjustment under Leave.
- On this screen, you can adjust annual, sick, and compassionate leave balances.
- Click Save.
Alternatively, you could make leave adjustments in bulk, as follows:
- Go to Employees > Bulk Actions.
- Click on Payslip Inputs under Payroll Inputs.
- Click on the drop-down menu showing “Basic Salary” by default, and select “Leave Adjustment” at the bottom of the drop-down list.
- Check the box under Add, and then you’ll be able to enter adjustments to the balances of annual, sick, and compassionate leave on that screen.
- Click Save.
Effect of leave adjustments
Any leave adjustment that is made will take effect / be included in the balance only once you have finalised the payslip you were working on when the adjustment was entered under Payslip Inputs.
Extra Annual Leave¶
The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) specifies the minimum number of annual leave days that employers have to grant their employees, which is the number of regular working days in a 3-week period. For example, an employee working 5 days a week is entitled to a minimum of 5 × 3 = 15 annual leave days per year.
SimplePay is set up to automatically allocate this minimum leave entitlement to employees based on their regular working hours.
However, you can decide to give your employees more than the minimum entitlement; for example, you might choose to increase the above-mentioned employee’s entitlement to 20 days. Therefore, you will be giving them 5 extra annual leave days per year.
To capture such an addition to employees’ leave entitlement/accrual on the system:
- Go to an employee’s profile, and click on Add next to Regular Inputs.
- Click on Extra Annual Leave under Leave.
- Enter the number of extra Working days per year you want to grant them; e.g. 5 in the above example.
- Click Save.
Extra annual leave
Annual leave in excess of the legal minimum is not necessarily subject to the rules of the BCEA – in terms of things like pay-out on termination and rate calculations. Please bear this in mind and override system values for leave transactions if necessary.