Checking Bereavement Leave Calculations in a Permanent Employee's Timesheet

This article will show you how to check that the bereavement leave is calculated at the expected rate. This is good practice, especially with variable hours.

Follow this link for a quick reminder of how to add a bereavement leave to your employee's timesheet.

1. In your saved timesheet (with green boxes), left-click in the entry field of the bereavement leave hours to access the calculation data for that entry. Scroll down to find the cost tracking information below the timesheet.
2. This line shows the value of the bereavement leave to be paid for this entry. Note that different days could have different values based on your employee's work pattern, i.e. they work fewer hours on certain days.
   
   1. In this example, this line shows that for the entry clicked (Bereavement on Thursday 13 July) a total of $ 200 will be paid for the hours entered in the timesheet. Meaning: this entry is worth $ 200 to the employee.
3. This shows the ordinary hours the system recognises as a typical day for this particular day, i.e. a typical Thursday. 
   1. In this example, a full work day on a Thursday is 8 hours long based on the Employee Profile.
      
   2. If the hours per day have not been set in the Employee Profile, the system will calculate the hours by dividing the week's total hours by the number of days worked.
4. The system will automatically default to paying bereavement leave at the relevant daily pay rate, as per the Holidays Act.
5. When your employee works variable hours and it is not possible to determine the relevant daily pay, the Holidays Act allows for using average daily pay. You can choose to use that calculation by selecting it here.
6. You will note that bereavement leave does not impact employee leave balances, so this column should be empty.

Helpful things to note:

• Check if the day you are entering as bereavement leave in the timesheet is set up as an otherwise working day in the system.
  • This seems simple enough, but so easy to miss. Employees with the 'as per the Holidays Act' leave setting only receive bereavement leave on days that are otherwise working days for them. If this is not an otherwise working day, simply delete the entry from the timesheet and SAVE.
  • To check up on this, go to the Employee Profile - Standard Pay Tab and see what is entered in the 'default week' settings. 
    
  • If the employee's work pattern has changed and this table needs to be updated, be sure to also update the 'Days in a typical week' setting in the Leave Tab of the Employee Profile.
• If all the fields look right but the value paid for the day (point 1) is wrong, follow this link to an article showing you how to update your timesheet correctly. The article uses Annual Leave as an example, but the same steps should be followed to update the background calculations in any malfunctioning timesheet.