WorkSmarter’s Holiday Planner takes all the hassle out of managing staff annual leave. 

Request, review, approve or decline holiday requests via the platform or mobile app.

Automatic alerts help prevent holiday conflicts within your team so staff can avoid clashes, duplicate bookings, or exceeding their allowance. A shared Holiday Calendar lets every user keep track of their leave details, providing transparency for all. 

The system adapts to the way your business operates, with flexible tracking and adjustments: 

• Track by hours or days.

• Set holiday allowances across multiple years.

• Prorate entitlements for new employees joining mid-way through the year. 

• Roll over unused holiday automatically, from one year to the next - or adjust these allowances by hand.

• Optionally award extra time off instead of overtime pay, and manage these allowances separately for staff. Employees can submit a Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) request. 

• Book company holidays in bulk or add custom blocked off or non-working dates. 

For maximum flexibility, leave can be taken in half days, single days and single day blocks. When employees make a new holiday request, their Manager is immediately notified so they can review, approve or decline the request. Staff are automatically notified of the decision and the shared Holiday Calendar is updated. 

WorkSmarter’s clever Holiday Calculator calculates time off for you, helping you keep track of and stay compliant with entitlement. 

View a handy Holiday Summary on your dashboard and call up instant Holiday Reports for the latest Management information, insights and analysis. 

What Measurements can I use to Track Staff Holidays?

You can track holidays in days or hours. Day tracking is recorded in half-day increments and hourly tracking is recorded in 15-minute increments. To choose your settings, from the sidebar go to the Organisation tab then click on Company Settings (below the Your Company heading) and select Holiday Settings. 

Can I Change our Holiday Year Start Dates?

Yes. The holiday year start date is the date the employee's holiday entitlements will reset each year. Any changes can be made from the Batch Update tool which is accessed within the sidebar, via the Organisation tab.

From the sidebar, go to Organisation and select Batch Updates. The Action field lets you select the change you wish to make. In this case, select Change Holiday Year Start Dates For Multiple Users. You can select individual employees, or use the Quick Select button for whole departments, offices or company-wide. Set your new holiday start date and submit your batch update.

How do I Manage Bank Holidays in the System to Ensure Staff get Their due Entitlement?

When public holidays are turned on for the user, these dates have already been added to the calendar and users don’t need to book these dates off manually. 

The statutory annual leave entitlement for most workers working a 5-day week is 28 days leave (the equivalent of 5.6 weeks.) Bank holidays can be part of this allowance. When public holidays are enabled, this will effectively provide users who fall into this category with the ability to book 28 days plus the public holidays. 

To ensure the holiday entitlement reflects your company's correct number of bookable days for users, simply reduce each employee’s entitlement appropriately. For example: there are 8 public holidays per year in England and Wales so you would reduce to 20 days. If your total allowance includes bank holidays, the eight public holidays will then make up the remainder - giving a total allowance of 28 days. 

Don’t forget that part time workers get the same holiday entitlement as full time staff on a pro-rata basis, including bank holiday entitlements.  

If have any questions about this, don’t hesitate to contact the WorkSmarter team and we’ll be happy to help. 

How do I Turn off Public Holidays for any User?

You can do this via the employee profile page. From the sidebar, go to Organisation. Click on ‘People’ to bring up your list of users. Select the required user, go to Edit Profile and then Holiday Settings. From here, you can turn off public holidays.  

How do I add Days in Lieu to an Employee's Holiday Entitlement?

To add time off in lieu (TOIL): from the sidebar go to Organisation then select People. Click on the relevant user then Edit Profile. Navigate to Holiday Settings and enable Time off in Lieu. This displays an extra field for additional TOIL allowance when setting holiday entitlements for this employee. Save your preferences. In the Holiday Entitlements table, select the TOIL box to set the additional allowance this employee should receive in lieu of overtime. You'll enter this in hours or days, depending on the metric you use for holiday management. The TOIL balance will appear in their entitlement and the employee can now request the time off through their WorkSmarter account as normal.