# Regulatory Compliance Category > Labour Relations and Legislation Forum >  Annual Leave - Pastel Payroll

## KimH

I have a question regarding to the calculation of annual leave, not sure if this is the correct place to put this query  :Wink: 

A client of mine closes his factory for 4 weeks in December, the staff's employment contracts all indicate that annual is 4 weeks per annum.  They are using Pastel Payroll and are currently accruing leave at the rate of 1.25 days per month.  This equates to 15 leave days per annum and results in the leave days due on payslips generally reflecting a negative value.  When I asked the bookkeeper about this, she stated that they track leave days on a spreadsheet, now this is all well and good by my reckoning until such time that you terminate an employee from your system, surely the correct method would be to change the 1.25 days to the correct number of days that the employee does receive in order to keep an accurate record and alleviate any issues on termination?

I am not that clued on Pastel Payroll and would like to know whether you can change the allowed number of leave days or whether it defaults to 1.25 days per annum, and whether the system would in fact deduct negative leave days from the final calculation if you terminate an employee from the system?

Thanks

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## greghsa

I don't know why they track leave days in Excel. Pastel Payroll is excellent software to manage leave days. Pastel Payroll works by allocating a certain amount of days per year per employee. It will then calculate the weekly or monthly leave. (Joe is a monthly employee and gets 18 days - 18/12= 1.5 days per month). During the year the employee will take leave. Pastel Payroll has various codes for leave e.g. Annual leave, Sick Leave etc. The employer will deduct days for this employee (in this case it is annual leave and employee takes from 05 December - 31 December. Pastel will work out number of days taken and will exclude weekends-[employee assuming a 40day week] and public holidays [software setup loaded with Pastel Payroll]). The employee may go negative if they take more than their allocated leave. If the employee is terminated, then the software will handle the calculation. People that have Pastel Payroll qualify for free support and can phone the call centre during office hours. I do not profess to be a payroll expert, but I know that the real payroll experts are only a phone call away!

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KimH (16-Aug-10)

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## KimH

Greg, what boggles my mind is that the bookkeeper uses excel to track pretty much everything... she obviously does not understand just how powerful Pastel payroll and accounting packages really are!  That is about to change  :Smile:

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## sterne.law@gmail.com

You may want to consider the legal aspect here.

Many company's that have such annual shutdowns will operate the leave clause along the following lines
21 consecutive days leave a year, 15 days = 1,25 days per month, which must be taken during annual shutdown. Furthermore the 15 extra days will be ex gratia. 
If you assign 2,5 days leave a month, as an example and I leave in June, you will then have to pay me out 15 days, presuming I started in January.

Despite the above, there really is no logic in using excell, if you already have teh apyroll package.

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## KimH

The employment contracts simply state 4 weeks annual leave, however as that is in relation to their December close policy I think that my client should in fact add that 15 extra days will be ex gratia.  In their 14 years of trading they have had 1 resignation and 1 dismissal - had they experienced a large turnover of staff, perhaps a problem would have presented itself.  I am however cautious when it comes to employee related matters and would rather make the above recommendation to my client to protect him from any possible future issues.
Thanks Anthony, I hadn't considered it from the perspective you used as an example.

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## BrianPayroll

I work for a company that manages payrolls, if you like you can give me a call 072 244 0056 and we possibly set up a consultation to guide you through it. 

Yes it is weird that they use excel to track info when they are paying for a package like excel to do it for them.

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## Payroll4SA

Hi there,

I am also using Pastel Payroll and it is a great tool and software to calculate leave and many other things with!

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