Deputy is rolling out a new leave management system which is currently only available to select customers in the UK before being made available more widely later this year.

This article is intended for Deputy customers using the new leave management feature. If you are a Deputy Premium customer in the UK and not using the new system yet, please read Preparing to migrate to the new leave management experience.

If you have leave policies set up that accrue leave entitlements for your team over a set 12 month period, what happens when employees start part-way through that leave year?

Instead of having to manually calculate how much pro-rata leave these new starter employees are entitled to, Deputy can automatically do these calculations and apply the leave to your new starter's leave balance as a one-off action. See some examples.

Before you get started
Which leave policies I can configure to calculate pro-rata entitlements?
1. Fixed annual accrual
2. Accrual based on agreed hours over an annual period
What conditions must be met for the pro-rata leave to apply?
How is the pro-rata leave calculated?
Troubleshooting

Before you get started

Please ensure you:

are logged into Deputy as a System Administrator
understand how to set up leave policies
have the hire date entered in the new starter's profile

Which leave policies I can configure to calculate pro-rata entitlements?

Not all leave policies you configure are eligible (nor relevant) for applying pro-rata leave entitlements to new starts you begin part way through a leave year.

As such there are two main types that you can set up that will calculate pro-rata leave entitlements:

1. Fixed annual accrual leave policies

When setting up fixed leave policies that release a fixed amount of leave every year on a specific date you will have the option to tick the box to have pro-rata leave calculations apply.

fixed leave accrual with pro rata.png

Note: the pro-rata option is NOT available (nor relevant) if you configure the policy to release the fixed leave:

every week, month or quarter
starting on the employee's hire date

IMPORTANT: when you select the specific date for the fixed leave policy to start, please make sure the year you select is correct. If you accidentally select the upcoming leave year (instead of the current leave year) then the pro-rata leave will not be applied to any employees that join in the current leave year.

Once you have ticked the box to enable pro-rata leave entitlement click on View all pro-rata settings to expand the drop-down and further configure the pro-rata settings.

pro rata settings.gif

See below for more information on how these settings affect the calculation of pro-rata leave entitlements.

2. Accrual based on agreed hours over an annual period

Leave policies that calculate leave entitlements based on agreed hours over an annual period

When setting up leave policies that release leave based on agreed hours every year on a specific date you will have the option to tick the box to have pro-rata leave calculations apply.

based on aggreed hours pro rate leave.png

Note: the pro-rata option is NOT available (nor relevant) if you configure the policy to release the accrued leave starting on the employee's hire date

IMPORTANT: when selecting the specific date for leave policy to start, please ensure the year you select is correct. If you accidentally select the upcoming leave year (instead of the current leave year) then the pro-rata leave will not be applied to any employees that join in the current leave year.

Once you have ticked the box to enable pro-rata leave entitlement click on View all pro-rata settings to expand the drop-down and further configure the pro-rata settings.

agreed prorata setting.gif

See below for more information on how these settings affect the calculation of pro-rata leave entitlements.

What conditions must be met for the pro-rata leave to apply?

For a pro-rata leave entitlement to be automatically calculated and applied to a new starter employee's leave balance as a one-off accrual, the following conditions must be met:

the leave policy must be configured with the option ticked to enable pro-rata leave as described above with the leave being accrued over an annual period or 'leave year'.
the employee must have the leave policy assigned to them in their profile
the employee must have their hire date entered in their profile
the hire date of the employee must fall within the configured 'leave year' of the leave policy.

How is the pro-rata leave calculated?

The pro-rata leave entitlement is equal to the (yearly leave entitlement) multiplied by (days or months in employment in the leave year) divided by (days or months in the year).

The pro-rata leave entitlement settings you configure will affect how the pro-rated leave is calculated.

You can choose to calculate the pro-rated leave based on how many days or months remain in the current leave year.

months or days to pro rate leave.png

If you select Months from the drop-down menu then the pro rata leave entitlement will be calculated according to this equation:

If you select Days from the drop-down menu then the pro rata leave entitlement will be calculated according to this equation:

You can also choose whether the calculated leave entitlement is rounded and the direction of the rounding. Select from:

Rounding up
Rounding down
No rounding

Rounding direction.png

If you choose to round up or down you will also have to select whether you want to:

Round to half
Round to whole
Round to decimal place

Round to.png

Let's look at some examples and work through how the pro-rata leave entitlement is configured and calculated.

Example 1: Fixed entitlement pro-rata release

Helga starts working for an organisation on 4th March 2024.
This organisation has a leave policy configured that entitles team members to 16 hours of community service leave every year from 1st January 2024 until 31st December 2024.
Helga will be at the organisation for 10 months of this 12 month leave period (March is included even though she did not start by 1st March).

Let's look at how Deputy calculates the leave entitlement in this scenario:

1. We can see that the community service leave policy is set up to release 16 hours on the 1st of January and then reset the balance every 1st of January.

fixed community service leave.png

Web template - 2023-08-30T111809.834.png

2. We can also see that Helga has a Hire date of 04/3/24 and has the Community service leave policy assigned in their profile.

helga employment profile.png

3. When we click on the Leave tab and then select View details for Community Service Leave in Helga's profile we can see that 13.5 hours of leave was added to the leave balance.

helga leave balance.png

5. Using the calculation above Deputy has calculated the leave entitlement as (yearly leave entitlement = 16 hours) multiplied by (months in employment in the leave year = 10 months) divided by (the months in the year = 12 months) also expressed as:

16 hours x 10/12 months = 13.333333 hours.

Notes:

Even if the employee joins mid-way through the month, that month is counted as a full working month no matter what date in March they joined. Even if they join on the last day of the month then that month will still be counted as a full working month for the purposes of calculating pro-rate leave.
The leave entitlement example has been configured to round up to the next half hour, in this case, to credit Helga's leave balance with 13.5 hours of Community Service Leave.
On 1st January 2025, the leave balance will be reset to 0 hours and the full 16 hour leave entitlement will be credited to Helga's leave balance for the leave period of 1st January 2025 to 31 December 2025.
The leave balance history shown above lists "Deputy" as adding the leave balance for this leave type as this action was automatically triggered by adding the employee part way through the leave year as per the pro-rata configuration of the leave type.

Example 2: Agreed hours pro-rata release

Marvin starts working full time for an organisation on 4th March 2024. His contract states that his leave year starts on 1 April and ends on 31 March and his leave is accrued based on agreed hours with a full-time equivalent employee eligible for 28 days over the leave year.

Let's look at how Deputy calculates the leave entitlement in this scenario:

1. Ensure that the leave policy is set up to accrue leave based on agreed hours with the leave being released every year on 1st April.

agreed based leave configuration.png

2. New starter Marvin's hire date is entered as 4th March 2024 in his profile.

marvin hire date.png

3. Marvin's regular hours are set in his profile and he is assigned the configured leave entitlement.

marvin regular hours.png

4. When we click on the Leave tab and then select View details for "UK leave April 1 start cycle" leave policy in Marvin's profile we can see that 3 days of leave was added to the leave balance.

marvin leave balance.png

5. Using the calculation above Deputy has calculated the leave entitlement as (yearly leave entitlement = 28 days) multiplied by (days in employment in the leave year = 27) divided by (the days in the year = 366 days since 2024 was a leap year) which can also be expressed as :

28 days leave x 27/366 days = 2.06557 days