Public holiday calendars FAQs

Frequently asked questions regarding updating or extending a public holiday calendar, changing a default calendar and other questions.

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Written by Maud
Updated over a week ago

🎯 For advanced admins with full access to Planday.

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Update or extend a Public holiday calendar

How do I add days specific to my business to a Public holiday calendar?

Once a public holiday calendar has been applied, you can use the edit holiday function under Settings > Your organisation > General > Public holiday calendar to add individual days, such as regional or local public holidays, change the starting hour for events or remove a holiday from the list.

new update hol cal.png

How do I update or extend a holiday calendar?

When new future or updated calendar dates are made by Planday to the System public holiday calendar, they are not automatically transferred to your custom-created Planday calendar(s). You will receive communication(s) on when these new future or updated calendar dates will be added to Planday and what steps you will need to take to ensure you are able to action these as needed for any Public holiday calendars you have created.

How to extend an existing calendar with the new updates:

  1. In Settings > General > Public holiday calendars, click the icon on the right side (calendar with a link icon).

  2. Under "Copy from", select the desired Planday System calendar to copy from.

  3. Under "From date", select the date from which the update should apply.

  4. Press Save.

  5. You can check that the changes have been added by clicking Edit holidays and finding the new dates added to the list of holidays.


What happens if I add or remove days from a Public holiday calendar? Will it affect past data?

Yes, it will affect Payroll supplements both in the future and the past. We recommend using the ‘Lock pay period’ function to ensure changes are not made to past data. Learn more about How to lock a payroll period.

  • For example, you have a supplement called "Overtime (Public Holiday)" that is applied to a specific employee type and only to the days from the public holiday calendar.

If you add a day to the public holiday calendar, the supplement will be applied to that day and if you remove a day, the supplement will be removed from that day.

Unless the newly added public holiday needs to be taken into account, any existing leave requests or approved leave requests for the day in question won’t recognise the new public holiday. Therefore any existing/approved leave or pending leave requests will need to be declined.

This applies to both if the added/removed holidays are in the past or the future.

Note: Overriding the public holidays applicable to your employee(s) could be in breach of your compliance obligations. You should seek independent legal advice as appropriate for your business.


How do I know if public holiday hours will be sent to Xero for eligible employees?

To ensure public holiday hours are sent from Planday to Xero for eligible employees entitled to payment for not working on a public holiday, there are two available options:

*Prerequisite - The setting Include holidays in payslips must be enabled in Xero for the public holiday(s) to be automatically generated. For further support on Xero, navigate to Xero Central or contact the Xero Support team.

Option 1: In Xero, you’ll need to delete the timesheet for the impacted employee and move the hours of the public holiday to the public holiday pay item in the pay run. To learn more on Xero, navigate to Xero Central or contact the Xero Support team.

Option 2: In Planday, navigate to Settings > Integrations > Overview and click “Manage” under Xero.

  • Scroll down to the section Payroll, find the name of your Xero org and click on the pencil icon to edit.

  • Click on Add mapping where you’ll be able to manually map the ‘Absent on Public Holiday’ shift type’s salary code to the appropriate Xero pay item.

Note: Please ensure the relevant pay item has been created in Xero so it is available for mapping in Planday.

  • To find the salary code of the shift type ‘Absent on Public Holiday’ go to Settings > Schedule > Shift types.

    • The salary code can be found in the third column from the left once you’ve located the ‘Absent on Public Holiday’ shift type.

This will ensure eligible employees not required to work on a public holiday have these hours sent to Xero for payment automatically through the integration.


Change the default calendar

How do I change which public holiday calendar is the default?

You can change which calendar is your organisation’s default calendar at any time and backdate the change if needed in the field Valid from.

Note: Any employees who haven’t been assigned a specific calendar on their employee profile will be assigned the default calendar from the date you’ve assigned it. Backdating this change will affect past payroll data.

Go to Settings > Your organisation > General > Public holiday calendars, and next to the calendar you wish to set as the new default, click “Set as default”. This will open a pop-up window prompting for a “Valid from” date.

new set as default.png

Note: Any existing default calendar will be valid until your latest change's “Valid from” date.


How does this affect the existing default calendar?

Please be aware of the following if you are changing the default calendar:

If you set the valid from date

  • After the existing default calendars “Valid from” date, then the existing default calendar will be the default until the day before the new default calendar is valid.

  • Before the existing default calendar’s “Valid from” date, then the existing default calendar will be overridden by the new default calendar.

Note: If you need to restore an overridden default calendar, then you would need to reach out to our support team via chat.


Display a holiday calendar on the schedule

How can I display a holiday calendar on the schedule?

If you've set up a new public holiday calendar you can enable it in the schedule by going to Schedule > View settings > and turning on Public holidays / Leave.

All public holiday calendars created in your Planday organisation will now show up on your schedule including any custom holidays you have added.

new public holiday displayed on schedule.png

I have two locations in different states, will the schedule show both public holiday calendars?

Yes, the schedule will reflect the days of public holiday calendars assigned to those employees.

You can see the name of each calendar, so for example “Labour Day”, from the calendar called “Queensland” will be displayed as “Labour Day (Queensland)”

Note: Public holiday calendars will only show in the schedule if “Public holidays/Leave" is enabled under View Settings.


Delete a Public holiday calendar

Can a holiday calendar be deleted from Planday?

Deleting a calendar is not possible for the following reasons:

  • to ensure data consistency for historical scheduling and payroll data

  • to reduce the risk of deleting data by accident.


Warnings

Why am I seeing a yellow warning saying there is no calendar available when I edit an employee?

This means that no Public Holiday Calendar has been set up for your organisation. This is essential to ensure payroll is correct.


To create one, go to Settings > Your organisation > General > Public holiday calendar and click “Add public holiday calendar”.


You can take a look at the following article How to create and assign Public holiday calendars to learn more about it.


Why am I seeing a warning saying the calendar has expired when I edit an employee?

This warning is displayed if the calendar that is assigned to the employee, or the default calendar, is expired. For example, there are no more upcoming holidays in it. You would then need to update the relevant Public holiday calendar.


Go to Update or extend a Public holiday calendar to make an update and add new dates to the existing calendar.


See related articles:

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