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IMPORTANT NOTICE Information provided by Deputy is intended for general guidance purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal or financial advice. Deputy does not accept liability for actions taken based on this information. |
This article outlines how you can manage paid and unpaid Parental leave in Deputy Payroll, and covers:
Parental Leave
Parental leave lets employees take time away from work for the birth or adoption of a child. The term ‘parental leave’ can include:
- unpaid parental leave under the Fair Work Act (FW Act)
- government-funded Parental Leave Pay
- employer-funded paid parental leave
In many cases, a manager will request and approve Parental leave on the employee's behalf, rather than the employee submitting a leave request via the Deputy mobile app.
Depending on the Parental leave agreements you have made with your employee, this Parental leave may need to be input as a single continuous block or multiple periods.
Before you submit Parental leave for an employee, you need to set up the Parental leave type/s in your Deputy account.
Parental Leave in Deputy
Overview
Employees can take Parental leave when a child is born or adopted. Rules and entitlements that apply depend on what stage of parental leave the employee is in.
There is no setting to accrue paid parental leave within Deputy, as employees will just take the amount of leave they are entitled to as required.
It's up to the System Administrator to set whether employees can view and request the Parental leave entitlement in Deputy, or whether it will be submitted on their behalf by the manager.
Any approved Parental leave timesheets generated are automatically synced to Deputy Payroll during a pay run.
Set up leave
To set up Parental leave in Deputy, you must be a System Administrator or Advisor access level.
First, head to Business Settings.
On the Leave tab, click on Leave Rules.
Click on New Leave Condition.
Paid parental leave
- Name your leave policy. Remember: if you make this leave policy visible to team members you'll want to name it something that makes sense to your team.
- Paid leave: For paid parental leave, set to ON. If you need both paid and unpaid parental leave policies, you'll need to create these separately.
- Type is set to Parental Leave
- Visible to Team member ON or OFF. This is the choice of the System Administrator whether you want employees to be able to request leave - if you toggle it to OFF then only managers can request Paid parental leave on the employee's behalf.
- Export Rule for Payroll is determined by whether your leave policy is Paid or Unpaid. When leave is set to Paid, the Export Rule for Payroll is set to Export using Export code. The Export Code field is not used for Deputy Payroll, so you don't need to change the default Export Code. However, you may want to change this Export Code if you intend to use this data to run reports using Deputy Analytics.
- Click on Save This Leave Condition.
Assign the Paid Parental leave entitlement to eligible employees in their profile or by bulk action.
Unpaid parental leave
- Name your leave policy. Remember: if you make this leave policy visible to team members you'll want to name it something that makes sense to your team.
- Paid leave: For unpaid parental leave, set to OFF. If you need both paid and unpaid parental leave policies, you'll need to create these separately.
- Type is set to Unpaid Leave
- Visible to Team member ON or OFF. This is the choice of the System Administrator whether you want employees to be able to request leave - if you toggle it to OFF then managers can still request Paid Parental Day leave on the employee's behalf.
- Export Rule for Payroll is determined by whether your leave policy is Paid or Unpaid. When leave it set to Unpaid, the Export Rule for Payroll is set to Do Not Export. This means that Unpaid leave timesheets will not show in the Export Timesheets page, but they will still be automatically pulled into the relevant pay run when the Unpaid leave timesheet is approved.
- Click on Save This Leave Condition.
Assign the Unpaid Parental Leave entitlement to eligible employees in their profile or by bulk action.
Accrual and leave balances
Employees do not accrue or carry over Paid Parental Leave as it is taken on an 'as needed' basis. Therefore, there is no need to confirm any accrual rates or set a leave balance for Paid Parental leave in Deputy. You can leave the balance at 0 hours.
Request and approval
If you have enabled the option to allow team members to request Parental leave, then your employees will be able to:
If you did not make the Parental leave visible to employees, a manager will need to add the Parental leave request on behalf of an employee.
Timesheet approval
If the manager adds or approves a Parental leave request for the future, the associated leave timesheets will not be generated until the day of leave starts. Leave timesheets will appear on the Approve timesheet page with Approved Status.
IMPORTANT: There is no need to export Parental leave timesheets at this point if you have Deputy Payroll enabled in your account, so you shouldn't need to even open the Export Timesheets page. The leave timesheets will be automatically synced to the employee's payslips when you process the pay run for the relevant dates of Parental leave.
Payslip review in the pay run
When you process a pay run, any relevant approved Parental leave timesheets for the date period will be automatically synced to the employee's payslip.
Paid Parental leave
You will see that for the Parental Leave payment line in the payslip, the STP Category has been automatically designated as P for Paid Parental Leave.
Unpaid Parental leave
Unpaid parental leave will show on the payslip as Leave Without Pay, and the STP Category has been automatically designated as Extra - Gross. Note: Unpaid parental leave will not appear on an employee's payslip.
Important Note: Deputy does not provide advice on employment law or taxation matters, including payroll specifics. Please seek professional advice from your legal/tax adviser if you are unsure what should be selected in these fields.
It is your responsibility to ensure that you are correctly classifying and reporting payment types through Single Touch Payroll. It is also your responsibility as an employer to ensure that you are paying your employees correctly in line with applicable legislation, award/s and industrial instrument/s and so it is important that you carefully review (and if necessary, make any adjustments to) the payslips generated for each of your team members before completing the pay run.
Timesheet and payslip updated as paid
When you complete the pay run and lock it, this is the trigger for the leave timesheet in Deputy to be marked as paid on both the Approve and Export timesheets pages. Note: Unpaid Parental leave timesheets will not appear on the Exports timesheets page.
The employee will also receive a payslip to let them know that the Paid Parental leave has been paid.
Note: Unpaid parental leave will not appear on an employee's payslip.