Changes to how the annual leave balance is displayed
- You can set up payroll to show annual leave an employee can take in advance of becoming entitled to it.
- When you set up a new employee in payroll, or make changes to an existing employee’s working hours, Xero will automatically calculate their annual leave entitlement.
The biggest addition is that you can now set up an employee’s annual leave balance to display the amount of leave they can take in advance.
An employee who previously had no leave in their balance, for instance, might now have some leave available — this is their ‘leave available to take in advance.’
To make it easy for you, this new feature is enabled by default for all new employees you set up in payroll. You can easily switch it on for existing employees:
- From Payroll, select Employees and choose an existing employee.
- Navigate to the Leave tab and click on Annual Leave balance.
- Tick the box to Include leave available to take in advance in the balance and Save.
Once you’ve turned this option on, your employees’ annual leave balances – including leave available in advance – will show on their payslips in the employee portal and Xero Me mobile app. To keep things simple, only payroll admins will now see holiday pay balance in dollars when this option is turned on.
Automatic calculation of hours accrued annually
You no longer have to manually enter hours accrued annually for employees. It’s automatically calculated based on their weekly hours multiplied by half their holiday pay percentage.
For employees who aren’t subject to the Holidays Act — such as business owners who pay themselves — you can set the holiday pay percentage to zero and they won’t accrue annual leave.