You can choose to enable or disable a sick leave cap, and specify the number of days you want to cap sick leave at. When this is enabled, for each employee you want the cap to apply for, you should chose 'use company setting'.

If you want to provide a higher entitlement than the default 10 days for family violence leave, you can set 'increase family violence leave' to yes and specify the number of days.

You can choose which balances you'd like to display on your employee payslips by checking the boxes next to each leave type you want to display.

These settings determine how the rate will be calculated for each of the leave types.

Annual leave and annual leave cash up can only be set to 'highest of current or averages'. This is in line with the requirements of the Holidays Act.

The other leave types may be set to 'current' or 'highest of current vs averages'.

All employees need to be set up with their hours type as being either Standard hours, Varied hours or Casual.

When an employee is selected as having the hours type 'Standard hours', you will be asked to complete the standard number of hours and days per period (based on their pay frequency).

Your employee's leave entitlements will be added to their balance based on the hours specified here, so it is important to change the hours and days if your employee changes their working hours. These hours and days are used to calculate relevant leave rates.

If your employee does not have a fixed number of hours per week, you may wish to choose varied hours.

Selecting 'varied hours' means that the leave entitlements will be calculated based on the hours recorded in each pay period. A days paid field will be available. If your employee does not have a fixed number of days per pay, you can enter '0' here and you will be asked to complete it each pay run.

Selecting casual as the work hours type means the entitlements are calculated in the same way as a varied hours employee but the 'pay 8% holiday pay' annual leave method becomes available to select if required.

The annual leave settings for your employee allow you to set the number of weeks they are entitled to each year, the annual leave payment rate calculation method and their anniversary to annual leave.

In the 'weeks holiday per year' you should not set a value less than 4, as 4 weeks is the minimum entitlement for all employees in New Zealand. The weeks are calculated based on your employee's working hours, so you do not need to pro-rata the weeks calculation as their part time hours will already be accounted for when they receive their entitlement.

The annual leave 'rate rule' drop down allows you to select from the following options:

We recommend you include a 4 week average when your employee's pay varies and you may not ordinarily be able to determine what a regular week of pay is.

The employee's leave anniversary should only be changed in specific circumstances and we generally recommend you do not alter this: you can discuss your requirements with our Support team if you feel the anniversary date should change.

In your employee's sick leave settings, there is an option to not have your employee accrue sick leave but we don't recommend you enable this unless you are certain based on professional advice that your employee is not entitled to sick leave.

In the 'Cap sick leave balance' setting drop down, you should select 'Use Company Setting' if you want to use a company sick leave cap that you have set. You can also choose to override the company setting and set a different sick leave cap for this employee, or choose 'no sick leave cap'.

The 'sick accrual' field is for the number of days the employee receives at each entitlement.

The sick leave anniversary by default is 6 months after their start date and then every 12 months thereafter. We recommend you do not adjust this unless you have had specific professional advice and if needed, contact our Support team.

The 'Family violence leave entitlement' setting is turned to 'use company setting' by default, however you can also choose 'override company setting' and specify a different number of entitled days.

The minimum statutory entitlement to family violence leave is 10 days.

In the other leave types section, you can choose to enable the required leave options.

Statutory refers to public holidays and should not be turned off, nor should bereavement leave.

You can choose to turn lieu and special leave on or off.

Lieu leave in this setting does not refer to the days earned for working on a public holiday, as these days are called alternative public holidays (though they are often referred to as lieu days).

Lieu leave here refers to an optional lieu leave type that can be earned and taken based on your company policy or requirements.

Special leave is a paid leave option you are able to use for other discretionary leave entitlements that you may offer to your employees.

The default selection for your employee's rate rule is 'always use primary payment' This means your employee's primary payment will be used to be considered as their current rate.

You can also choose to set an override rate, for example, if you have a defined rate that you want to use in place of their primary payment.

If your employee goes on parental leave, the settings to manage their parental leave dates are in their leave settings.

Switch the 'on parental leave' option to yes, and enter the start and end date of the parental leave.

Read more in our parental leave article.