Month-end leave for payroll: a routine that works

What payroll needs

Payroll does not need the story behind each day of leave. It needs a list it can match to employees and enter without guessing:

• the employee number, exactly as it is in the payroll system;
• the leave type, ideally as the code the payroll system uses for it;
• the dates, and the number of days or hours in this month;
• whether the leave is paid or unpaid;
• for people leaving, the annual leave balance still owed to them.

Payroll systems that import leave, such as Sage VIP, read this from a file, so a file in the right layout saves retyping. The exact layout depends on the system and its version; ask your payroll administrator for a sample.

Leave that crosses the month end

Someone on leave from 28 November to 5 December has days in two pay periods. Count only the working days that fall in the month you are reporting: here, the days from 28 to 30 November in the November file, and the rest in December. Leave out weekends and public holidays.

Unpaid leave

Unpaid leave changes what someone is paid, so it matters most to get right and on time. Keep it as its own leave type, approved like any other, so it shows separately in the month's figures.

A routine

1. A few days before the cut-off, look at requests still waiting for approval, and approve or decline them.
2. Check that leave someone told you about in person has been recorded.
3. On the cut-off day, produce the month's file of approved leave and send it to payroll.
4. Anything approved after the cut-off goes into next month's file, with its original dates.

The point is that the file comes from the same records people used to ask for and approve leave, so nobody types the month into a spreadsheet a second time.

How AwayDesk handles it

Reports, Month-end for payroll, gives you the approved leave for the month per employee and line by line, as Excel or CSV. Each leave type carries your payroll code and whether it is paid; employees carry your employee numbers; leave crossing a month end is split; and balances are shown at the month end. Send us a sample of your payroll system's leave import and we will match the file to it.

General information about payroll practice, not tax or legal advice.