Please Note: Long Service Leave is not included as there are many variations in legislation between states and territories within Australia. However, you can manually keep track of dates and leave payments in the Employee Diary and Leave Register.

The following information addresses Annual Leave, but also applies to Personal/Carers Leave.

When the employee is entitled to Annual Leave, click on the checkbox for Does this employee have Annual Leave?’
This will activate the Annual Leave option as well as the three radio (round) options to determine how the leave is calculated.

Option 1 is to accrue leave based on hours worked. The amount accrued is equal to the number of days per year divided by the normal hours per week multiplied by
the number of hours worked. In other words, it calculates leave on the basis of 20 days entitlement being 4 weeks or 1/13th of a year. If the employee’s award or agreement requires you to divide by 12 to calculate prorate leave, use the ‘Nominate Hours per Pay’ option.

You then have the choice to:

• Prorate leave indefinitely –so the leave is calculated on the hours worked per pay, or
• Prorate leave for the first year only. This option is used for employees whose leave is prorated over the first year of employment but then receive the next year’s full entitlement on the anniversary of their employment. 

On the anniversary date of employment, you will need to manually add the next year's leave entitlement to the Annual Leave Balance (Hours). For example, if the employee is entitled to 10 days of sick leave and the employee works 8-hour days, you would add 80 hours (10 days x 8 hours) to the balance in Sick Leave Accrued (Hours).

Option 2 is Nominate hours per pay where you nominate the number of hours to accrue regardless of hours worked or any other factor. Each time a pay is processed, this number of hours will be accrued.

Option 3 is User to control manually. This option requires you to accrue leave manually by adding the accrued leave to the Annual Leave Balance (Hours) or editing the Accruals on the Pay Summary page. Leave taken will still be recorded automatically.

The Annual Leave Balance (Hours) box reports the amount of annual leave that an employee has accrued at a particular point in time.

When adding an employee who already has leave accrued, record the opening balance of leave accrued in the appropriate boxes.

However, the Leave Balance box advises the current balance of leave accrued and updates whenever you process a pay. So if you do not record the opening balance prior to processing pays in Wages Manager you will need to add the opening balance to the amount of any accruals calculated by the program and record the total balance.

The Leave Taken section advises the amount of leave that an employee has taken. When adding an employee who has already taken leave, record the opening balance of leave taken in the appropriate boxes.

However, as the Leave Taken updates whenever you process a pay, if you do not record the opening balance prior to processing any pays in Wages Manager you will need to add the opening balance to the amount of any leave taken calculated by the program and record the total balance.
 

Leave Loading:

Under the Annual Leave Tab, you can enable Leave Loading by ticking the box 'Does this employee have Leave Loading?' Click on [OK] to save changes, or [Cancel] to exit without saving.
 

Parental Leave

A ‘Parental Leave’ tab is included in the Leave section of ‘Employee Details’ where you can record the pay rate and set the period of time the employee will be absent for any employees taking Paid Parental Leave.

When you select that the employee has parental leave, the ‘Pay Rate (per hour)’ prefills with the rate applicable at the time the program was released. This amount can be edited if it is different. 

When you select this option for an employee, a ‘Paid Parental Leave’ column will display in the ‘Pay Single Employee’ work area and in the optional ‘Daily Hours’ window. 

When the pay includes paid parental leave, the system will check to see if the Pay Date falls within the date range specified in the ‘Parental Leave’ section of Employee Details and produce a message if it is not. This will also occur in the ‘Multiple Pays’.

A ‘Paid Parental Leave’ column has also been added to the Leave register. Use this instead of the old Maternity Leave column that is still listed.

Paid Parental Leave does not attract superannuation. It is included in the calculations for the Employer Cost report despite the fact that the employer does not actually incur the cost as the money is derived from the government to avoid different totals in different reports that might lead to confusion.
 

Calculating Accrued Personal Carers Leave & Annual Leave:

Divide the ‘Normal Hours’ by 5 days in the week, multiply this amount by the ‘Leave Entitlement’ days per year, and then divide this amount by the number of Pay Periods per year.

Personal Carers Leave Example:
40 hrs/5 days x 10 sick entitlement days/52 weeks = 1.54 sick hours accrued per weekly pay.

Annual Leave Example:
40 hrs/5 days x 20 annual entitlement days/52 weeks = 3.08 annual hours accrued per weekly pay.
 

PART-TIME EMPLOYEES & ENTITLEMENT ACCRUALS:

Regardless of how many days they work, part-time employees need to have their full award entitlements entered into the Annual Leave and Personal Carers Leave check boxes.  (Enter 20 days for four weeks Annual Leave, and either 8 or 10 days for Personal Carers Leave).  

The Wages Manager program will automatically calculate the accrued entitlements based on the actual hours the part-time employees have worked per week.