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Part 5 of 7 · Holiday accrual tracker series ~5 min read

What is owed on the last day, and how to be sure of it

Every other number this system produces is provisional. This one is final, it is paid, and it is checked by somebody who has just stopped being busy. It is worth getting the design right for this case alone.

Key takeaways

  • Accrue the final part-period. Leaving on the 9th still earns the hours worked to the 9th.
  • Carried hours are owed too. They are accrued and untaken like any other.
  • Overtaken leave can only be recovered if a written term says so.
  • Value the hours on a 52-week average of weeks with pay, looking back up to 104.
  • Attach the working. The number without it is an assertion.

The leaving calculation

A leaving date turned into a final holiday paymentA vertical chain inside an AWS account container, entered from a box on the left labelled A leaving date, confirmed with a final timesheet. Close the part-period counts hours worked up to and including the last day. Sum the entitlement adds this year's accrual to carried hours. Subtract what was taken uses deducted lines only, not reservations, with a side exit reading negative: Check the contract, since overtaken leave is recoverable only if a written term says so. Value the hours uses a fifty-two week average of weeks with pay. Pay and file records the payment and the working behind it. A note says the third step is the only one that can go negative, that a negative balance is not automatically a debt, and that most contracts are silent, which means it is not recoverable.AWS ACCOUNTA leaving dateconfirmed, with afinal timesheetClose the part-periodhours worked up toand including the last daySum the entitlementthis year's accrualplus carried hoursSubtract what was takendeducted lines only,not reservationsCheck the contractrecoverable only if awritten term says sonegativeValue the hours52-week average ofweeks with payPay and filethe payment, andthe working behind itThe third step is the only one that can go negative, and a negative balance is not automatically a debt. Most contracts are silent, and silence means it is not recoverable.
Fig 1. Five steps and one branch. The branch is the one businesses assume goes their way and usually does not.
  • Security & identity
  • Management
  • Analytics
  • Front-end & mobile

The final part-period

Somebody who leaves on the ninth of the month has worked whatever they worked between the first and the ninth, and that accrues like any other hours. It is a small number and it is omitted constantly, because the accrual job runs on closed pay periods and the last period never closes normally.

So the leaving event closes it early rather than skipping it. This matters more than the amount, because a leaver who spots that their final fortnight accrued nothing has a reason to check everything else, and everything else is four years long.

One leaver, one calculation

A leaver's final holiday payment in five stepsA horizontal row of five boxes joined by arrows. Joined on the twelfth of November, so the leave year runs from then. One thousand four hundred and seventeen hours worked since the year opened. One hundred and seventy-one hours accrued at twelve point zero seven per cent, rounded up. One hundred and four hours taken across five bookings, all deducted. Sixty-seven hours paid at twelve pounds ninety-four an hour, about eight hundred and sixty-seven pounds. A note says every box names its source, which is the difference between a payment and a payment somebody can check.ONE LEAVER, FIVE NUMBERS AND WHERE EACH CAME FROMJoined 12 Novso the leave yearruns from then1,417 hoursworked since theyear opened171.0 accruedat 12.07%,rounded up104 takenfive bookings, alldeducted67 hours paidat GBP 12.94,about GBP 867Every box names its source. That is the difference between a payment and a payment somebody can check.
Fig 2. The whole leaving calculation as one line. None of the arithmetic is hard; all of it has to be attributable.
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The rate is its own calculation

The hours are only half the answer. What they are worth is a week’s pay, and for somebody whose pay varies that means an average over the last 52 weeks in which they were actually paid something, ignoring the weeks with no pay and looking back as far as 104 weeks to find 52 that count.

Skipping the unpaid weeks is the part that gets missed, and it always goes the same way. A bank worker who did nothing for eleven weeks over the summer has those weeks excluded from the average, not counted as zeroes. Counting them as zeroes drags the rate down for exactly the workers whose pay is most variable.

The four-week pot is valued at normal remuneration, which brings in regular overtime and commission, and the remainder at basic contractual pay. The system already knows which pot each remaining hour sits in, from part two, which is why that split was carried in the data rather than reconstructed here under time pressure.

The sentence the evidence has to be able to write

  • This worker’s leave year opened on 12 November, under the statutory default.
  • They worked 1,417 recorded hours in it, from 34 closed pay periods and one part-period.
  • That accrued 171.0 hours at 12.07%, rounded up in each period.
  • They took 104 hours across five bookings, on these dates.
  • 67 hours remained, valued at 12.94 an hour from a 52-week reference period.
  • The payment of 866.98 was made in the final payroll run on this date.

Where this ends

The system does not stop a business getting holiday wrong, because most of the ways of getting it wrong are decisions people make. What it removes is the category of error where nobody decided anything — the accrual that ran for four years while the only record of it was a spreadsheet column, the carried hours that were zeroed because zeroing was the default, the final fortnight that accrued nothing because the job only ran on closed periods.

It also makes the honest answer the cheap one, which is the pattern worth copying out of this design more than any of the arithmetic. Sending every worker their balance each month is a small feature that happens to close the open-ended carry-over route in part four. The compliance outcome falls out of the operational one.

The next post prices it and the one after gives the service names, the tables and the IAM. The interesting thing about the cost is that the expensive step runs once per contract rather than once per shift, so a business that doubles its rota does not double its bill.

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