Holiday Accrual Explained

Hourly Paid Employees

Employees on S4Labour accrue (earn) holiday time as a proportion of the total time they work. Based on the government’s legal minimum of 28 days of paid leave per year for full time employees, hourly paid employees accrue holiday at 12.07% of total time worked. For example, if an employee works 100 hours, they will earn 12.07 hours of paid holiday time.

The average shift length of an hourly paid employee is known in S4Labour as the run rate. This is calculated on an average of the last 52 weeks of shifts and can be viewed for any employee in the Annual Holiday Accrual report. This is in effect the amount of paid holiday hours an employee receives when they take a day’s holiday. For example, if an employee has a run rate of eight hours, and take two days of paid holiday, they will receive sixteen times their hourly rate as holiday pay.

The run rate is also the amount an employee’s available holiday will be reduced by if they take a day’s paid leave. For example, if an employee has 50 hours of holiday available to them, and a run rate of eight hours, if they take a day’s holiday their available holiday will reduce to 42 hours.

Salaried Employees

Salaried employees who are contracted to work five or more days per week accrue holidays at 0.54 days per week worked. Part time salaried employees, who are contracted to work fewer than five days per week, will accrue holiday at a proportional lower rate. For example, an employee contracted to work four days per week will accrue holiday at 0.43 days per week.

Accrual Cost on Rota Page

The Cost column on the S4Labour rota page includes the value of holidays in the week they are accrued, rather than the week they are taken. This is to prevent a significant spike in labour spend in weeks when employees are on holiday and a replacement employee to cover their shifts must also be paid, on top of the holiday pay itself.

The Holiday Accrual Report 

Columns explained

Name/ Email - The name of the employee 

Type - This will either display hourly or Daily and this is based on how they accrue holiday hourly employees will display as hourly. Salary employees with display as daily. 

BFor - This is any carry-over amounts from the previous year. It will either display in hours or days 

Entitled (in year) - If the employee started partway through the year this will display the entitled in the year based on their start date and your holiday calendar dates. It will also add the Brought forward figures to this too.

Accrued - For hourly employees this is displayed in hours and is based on the hours worked on the rota or if using the furlough scheme their furlough hours (or both). For salary employees it's displayed in days, this is based on what stage in the holiday year you are in. 

Accrued inc BF - This is the accrual figure in the previous column added to the brought forward column

Taken - What the employee has taken (and recorded in S4labour) so far in this holiday year. This will show in either days or hours depending on the employee.

Scheduled (Days) - This shows you what the employee has scheduled for the rest of the holiday year. This will always show in days. 

Available - This displays what the employees remaining balance is based on the Accrued in Bf less the taken, less the scheduled.

Value - This is only visible to level 3's and above and will show the value of holiday for the employee showing accrued inc BF less Taken. This is the figure the employee will be paid/ or recover if they were to leave today. If the figure is showing a minus this is because they have been paid for more holiday than they have accused. There are preventional measures in place to prevent this from happening and require authorisation. The starters and leavers report also displayed this figure when someone if made a leaver. 

Days/Week - This is a guide to show if nothing changes the number of days the employee will need to take a week to use up all of their holidays. Worth keeping an eye on throughout the year. 

Actions - You will notice an option called weekly breakdown, this shows you the detail of the employee to have selected each of the weeks throughout the holiday year, how many hours were on the rota, how many hours of holiday accrual, any taken holiday and quick access to that weeks rota if you want to dig deeper. 

Run Rate - This is the average shift length over the last 52 weeks. When you first join us this will be set to 8 hours so it's important you provide us this information. This is essentially how many hours an employee will be paid when they take 1 days holiday. 

*Available Days - Based on the Available column and the run rate numbers this is how many days the employee has accured. The employee will see this figure when they request a holiday and when you accept the holiday request you will also see this figure to help you decide if to approve it or not. You can accept holidays if it takes them into negative accrual but as mentioned there are previously measures in place that require authorisation before this money is paid. 

Please take a look at the FAQs on Holiday if you have more questions Holiday FAQ