Otherwise Working Days

When it comes to handling Leave Requests as well as automated Public Holiday processing, it's vital to get Otherwise Working Days (OWDs) set up correctly so that PayHero can calculate your employees' entitlements for you.

A day is considered an OWD for an employee if it is a day they would normally work. In many cases this is easy to determine, but for some employees with variable working patterns, OWDs aren't so clear cut.

Factors to take into consideration when determining an OWD for an employee:

• The employee's contract/employment agreement.
• The employee's Work Patterns (Our automated Public Holidays and OWDs that we have set up in PayHero will look at using these to determine an employee's OWD).
• Whether the employee only works for the employer when work is available.
• If there are reasonable expectations between the employee and the employer that the employee would work that day.

The following sections explain how PayHero will determine your employees' OWDs and how you can adjust these if required.

Determining OWDs from Employee Work Pattern

When determining an OWD the first place PayHero looks is at the Work Pattern for each employee. For a salaried employee there are three ways to record a regular work pattern here - either by Regular Week, Regular Days and Hours or by No Regular Days.

If you enter Regular Week, then PayHero will know exactly what days your employee works and will use those as the employee's OWDs.

If you choose Regular Days and Hours or No Regular Days, PayHero won't have sufficient information to determine which days the employee usually works and will attempt to determine their work pattern from the employee's Timesheet history instead.

Similarly, if an employee is paid hourly and has a regular weekly work pattern, you can select Regular Week and PayHero will use those days as OWDs. If the employee has varibility in their working week, select the option which best represents their work pattern from Regular Days and Hours, No Regular Hours, No Regular Days or No Regular Week and let PayHero determine OWDs from their Timesheet records.

Determining OWDs from Timesheets

Many businesses with employees working variable days and hours use a rule of thumb when deciding on OWDs along the lines of 'Has the employee worked on this day of the week for 5 or more of the last 8 weeks?'. If you're using the Timesheets, PayHero has the details required to help make that decision for you based on this Review Period.

You can set or change the Review Period rules on the Payroll Settings tab, under Manage > Settings. You can then specify the Otherwise Working Day Minimum to set the minimum times the day must have been worked across the Review Period for the day to be counted as an OWD.

For example, if the rule is 'Has the employee worked on this day of the week for 5 or more of the last 8 weeks', your settings will look like this:

Note that PayHero will only refer to the Timesheets work pattern if it can't determine a work pattern set from the employee's Employment tab.

It's also important to keep in mind that this rule of thumb is designed to help identify whether a particular day might be an Otherwise Working Day for an employee. You'll still need to keep in mind whether there would have been reasonable expectations for an employee to work on a particular day.

OWDs For No Determinable Pattern

If the employee requesting leave has a work pattern where OWDs cannot be determined and a lack of timesheet history to work from, PayHero will default every day of leave requested as an OWD. The number of days of leave taken can then be adjusted manually from the draft pay if required.

In the example below an employee has requested Mon-Sun as leave but their work pattern and timesheet history lack enough information to determine OWDs. As opposed to an employee with a detailed work pattern where PayHero will recognise they only work Mon-Fri and put a request in for 5 days, the entire number of days requested will instead be recorded.

Manually specifying OWDs

PayHero will process any single day leave requests as an OWD for all employees. For example, an employee requesting a single day of annual leave will pay the employee for a day of leave regardless of whether it is an OWD or not. In the example below, Saturday the 11th will be designated as an OWD despite the employee not working over weekends.

Alternatively, if the employee has a request spanning multiple days and you disagree with the number of days PayHero determines to be OWDs, you also have the option to manually override the amount of leave processed in the pay run. Simply edit the employee's pay and adjust the number of days and hours on the pay item, then click Apply.

Ensure you also adjust the Work Days at the top of the pay if this will change the total number of days the employee is being paid for in that pay run, as this value is vital for the calculation of leave rates.