How to Set Up Public Holiday Calendars

Public holiday calendars tell the system which dates are special calendar days — public holidays, RDOs, and picnic days. Once a calendar is set up, any timesheet worked on one of those dates is automatically matched to the right calendar type when you process pay, so the matching rate in your pay rate document is applied without anyone having to flag each shift by hand.

Because public holidays differ from place to place (a holiday in one state isn't always a holiday in another), you can create more than one calendar — for example one per state — and decide which workers each calendar applies to.

You'll find this under Settings → Billing & Payments → Payroll Settings → Public Holiday Calendars. Managing calendars requires the Settings: Manage permission (Owners and Admins have it); if you don't have it, the section won't appear.

How it fits together

There are three simple pieces:

1. A calendar — a named list of special dates (e.g. "NSW Public Holidays").
2. The dates — each entry has a type (public holiday, RDO, or picnic day) and can be a one-off or repeat every year.
3. A worker tag (optional) — a calendar can be linked to a worker tag so only workers carrying that tag use it. If you leave the tag empty, the calendar applies to all workers — handy when every worker in the account observes the same public holidays.

So the flow is: create a calendar → (optionally) link it to a worker tag → add the holiday dates. From then on, processing does the rest.

Before you start

Two things need to be in place for a holiday rate to actually change a worker's pay:

• Workers are tagged (only if you're scoping by tag). A tagged calendar applies only to workers who carry its linked tag, so make sure those workers are tagged. You manage worker tags on the workers themselves (see How to Manage Workers). If you leave a calendar's tag empty, it applies to every worker and no tagging is needed.
• Your pay rate document has the matching calendar rate. The calendar decides which days are special and what type each is; your pay rate document decides how much each type is worth when worked (for example, 2.5× for a public holiday). Configure the public holiday, RDO, and picnic day calendar rates in each rule group. If a document has no rate for that type, marking the day on the calendar won't change the amount.

Create a calendar

1. Go to Settings → Billing & Payments → Payroll Settings → Public Holiday Calendars and select Add Calendar.
2. Give it a clear name (e.g. "NSW Public Holidays").
3. (Optional) Choose the worker tag it applies to. Workers carrying this tag will use this calendar. Leave the tag empty to apply the calendar to all workers.
4. (Optional) Set a priority — this only matters if a worker could match more than one calendar. Lower numbers take precedence (see Workers in more than one calendar).
5. Leave Active switched on and save.

Add holiday dates

Open a calendar and select Add date. Each entry has a name, a date type, and a date, and you choose how it repeats:

• One-off date — leave "Recurs every year" off and pick the exact date from the calendar picker (e.g. a one-time public holiday declared for a special event).
• Every year — switch "Recurs every year" on and choose the month and day. The date then applies on that day in every year automatically, so you never have to re-enter it. For example, Anzac Day shows as 25th April and applies on 25 April every year.

You can edit or remove any date later, and switch individual dates off without deleting them.

Date types

When you add a date, choose its type:

• Public holiday — a statutory or declared public holiday (e.g. Australia Day, Christmas Day).
• RDO — a Rostered Day Off date from the calendar (distinct from RDO accrual rules, which accrue entitlement from hours worked).
• Picnic day — a picnic day or similar scheduled non-work day on the calendar.

Each type is stored separately on the calendar. If the same calendar date is ever listed as more than one type, public holiday takes precedence over RDO, which takes precedence over picnic day.

Assign workers

If a calendar has a linked tag, it applies only to workers who carry that tag. Tag the relevant workers (for example, tag everyone who works in NSW with your "NSW" tag), and they'll automatically pick up that calendar's holidays. If a calendar has no tag, it applies to all workers, so there's nothing to tag.

Workers in more than one calendar

Each worker uses exactly one calendar — not a combination of them. Pay processing picks a single calendar per worker and reads only the dates on that calendar. Dates on every other calendar are ignored for that worker.

The calendar is chosen like this:

1. If the worker carries the tag of a tagged calendar, that calendar wins. A tagged calendar always beats an untagged "applies to all workers" calendar, which is only a fallback.
2. Otherwise the worker uses an untagged all workers calendar.
3. If more than one calendar is still in the running, the lowest priority number wins (priority 0 beats priority 5). Set the priority when you create or edit a calendar.

Two consequences are worth checking against your own setup:

• Don't split your dates across two "all workers" calendars. If you have, say, a "National Holidays" calendar and a separate "RDO Calendar" and neither has a tag, only the one with the lower priority number is ever used — every date on the other one is silently ignored, and nothing about the settings page indicates it. Keep all the dates for a given group of workers on one calendar and use the date type field to tell public holidays, RDOs, and picnic days apart.
• An empty tagged calendar still wins. A worker who carries a tagged calendar's tag uses that calendar even when it has no dates on it — they do not fall back to the all-workers calendar. If you create a tagged calendar, give it the full set of dates those workers need.

If a worker still matches several equally-specific calendars, that's recorded so it can be reviewed.

Overriding a single timesheet

Sometimes you need to mark one specific timesheet as a public holiday (or not a public holiday) regardless of the calendar — for instance a one-off situation the calendar doesn't cover. You can do this directly from the timesheets list:

1. Select the timesheet (or timesheets) you want to change.
2. Choose Set Public Holiday from the bulk actions.
3. Pick one of:
   • Public holiday — force these timesheets to be treated as a public holiday.
   • Not a public holiday — force them to be treated as a normal day, even if the calendar says it's a holiday.
   • Use calendar — clear the override and go back to letting the worker's calendar decide.

A manual override always wins over the calendar, and it stays in place even if timesheet data is re-synced.

How it affects pay

When you process pay, each worker's worked dates are checked against their calendar (and any manual overrides). The calendar type on that date decides which rate rule applies:

• Public holiday — the public holiday rate from the matched rule group.
• RDO — the RDO calendar rate (when configured in the rule group).
• Picnic day — the picnic day calendar rate (when configured in the rule group).

Each type has its own rate rule in the pay rate document, so a worker who does work on an RDO or picnic day can be paid differently from a public holiday. Manual Set Public Holiday overrides still force a timesheet to be treated as a public holiday regardless of the calendar.

Auto-created timesheets for days not worked

Public holiday and RDO calendar dates can both have timesheets created for them automatically, so a day nobody worked still reaches the payroll summary. This happens during pay rate processing — not as part of the import itself. So either click Apply Pay Rates for a period covering the date, or turn on Auto-apply pay rates, which kicks processing off as timesheets arrive. With auto-apply off, importing timesheets on its own creates nothing.

Public holiday auto-timesheets

If an applicable worker has no labour timesheet on a public holiday date in the pay period you're processing, the system creates one at standard hours (7:36, 7:00–14:36) so the holiday can still be paid.

RDO auto leave timesheets

If an applicable worker has no timesheet at all on an RDO calendar date, processing creates a leave timesheet coded as RDO at the same standard hours. Pay for that leave is driven by the RDO leave rule in your pay rate document — configure leave rules in each rule group to match the leave type RDO. See RDO calendar days and auto leave timesheets for how this sits alongside RDO accrual.

What has to be true

• The date is on the calendar that worker actually uses — see Workers in more than one calendar. Dates on a calendar the worker doesn't resolve to are never seen.
• The worker worked during the period. They need at least one real (non auto-created) labour timesheet somewhere in the date range being processed, so workers who have left or were away all period don't collect phantom days.
• The date is free. A public holiday is skipped when a labour timesheet already exists for that worker and date. An RDO is stricter — any timesheet on the date, labour or leave, stops it. If your imported timesheets already cover the RDO day, nothing is added on top.
• The worker's employment type is included. The Public holiday auto-timesheets and RDO auto leave timesheets cards on this settings page each limit which employment types are eligible (include only, exclude selected, or all types). They are configured separately — setting one does not set the other. Under include only, workers with no employment type set are excluded.

If a real timesheet later arrives for a date an auto-timesheet was created for, the auto one is removed on the next processing run so the day isn't counted twice. Picnic day dates are never auto-created.

Good to know

• Changes aren't backdated. Adding or changing a holiday affects pay the next time you process those timesheets — it doesn't retroactively recalculate runs you've already completed. Re-process the affected timesheets to apply the change.
• No calendar, no change. Until you create a calendar and add dates, nothing about pay processing changes. The feature is entirely opt-in. Once a calendar exists, it applies to its tagged workers — or to all workers if you leave the tag empty.
• The rate comes from your pay rate document. The calendar only identifies the days and their types; see How to Manage Pay Rate Documents and How to Configure Rule Groups for setting the public holiday, RDO, and picnic day calendar rates.