Set annual leave allowances

Allowances have two layers: an organisation default that covers most people, and per-person overrides for everyone else. Both are admin-only.

The organisation default

Under Settings → Leave allowances:

• Default annual allowance — what everyone gets unless overridden. 28 days is the UK statutory floor for full-timers (which may include bank holidays — see Bank holidays and closures).
• Accrual mode — Upfront (the full allowance is bookable from day one of the leave year) or Monthly (it builds up over the year). A change applies from the start of the next leave year.
• Carry-over — None, Capped (with a cap) or Unlimited; detail in Carry-over between leave years.

Click Save allowance defaults. The leave year itself (start month/day) is set in the setup wizard — deliberately hard to reach afterwards because changing it mid-year is disruptive.

Per-person overrides

Open People and click Allowance on a row. The panel shows their current Remaining and Entitlement, and lets you set:

• Start date — allowances pro-rate automatically for mid-year starters.
• Annual allowance — blank means “use the org default”.
• Carry-over cap — blank means “use the org cap”.
• Balance display unit — Days or Hours, per person. The stored balance is the same; this only changes how it’s shown.

Manual adjustments

The same panel takes dated manual adjustments — an amount (positive or negative), the leave year it applies to, and a required reason. Use these for one-off corrections: buying/selling holiday, an agreed bonus day, fixing an import. Every adjustment is listed with its reason, so the audit trail explains the maths.

What does the maths for you

• Working patterns pro-rate allowances — a person on a 3-day working-hours template gets 3/5 of the allowance, automatically.
• Starters pro-rate from their start date; leavers pro-rate to their last day, with the accrued-at-leaving figure surfaced in the Balances report.