Understanding the Leave Liability Table

Updated: November 2025

What is Leave Liability?

Leave liability is the dollar value of all the types of leave the employee has earned that is owed to them in a final pay. Unless otherwise stated in the employment agreement, sick leave does not form part of leave liability.

Reading the Leave Liability Table

Click on the orange buttons to find out more about each line.

For an example of what the leave liability table looks like for each employment type, follow this link.

Pro Tip - Blue Block Key Takeaways:

The Total amount showing is what is payable to your employee if they are to leave.
If the amount is NEGATIVE, you have paid for leave the employee has not earned yet and you may not be able to recover the amount of the overpaid leave .

Accessing Leave Liability Reports

There are two ways to access an employee's leave liability:

In the employee timesheet, and
In the Reports/Archive tab.

Accessing Leave Liability from the Timesheet:

To see this, simply scroll down the page of the timesheet you are loading or go to the Timesheet tab when in your Employees profile. The table is under your employee list.

This is the quickest way of checking the balance.

Accessing Leave Liability by creating a Quick Report - Leave Liability:

This report will provide you with a summary for one or all your employees.

Follow this link to find out how to run this report.

Further Resources

You can learn more about leave and which type is right for your employee by checking the Employment New Zealand website or contacting them on 0800 20 90 20.
We have a handy flowchart you can print off to help you through the steps:
How do I find my employee's Annual Leave Balance Flowchart
To view a 5 minute video walkthrough of the Annual Leave Liability table, follow this link to our YouTube channel.

Bonus - Green Block Did you know we have a video explaining how allocated leave and leave accrual work? View the video on Understanding Annual Leave here.