What this guide covers
The leave side of HR Settings: the Leave Types, Leave Plan and Company Shutdown tabs, how an employee's balance is built from them, and the tools HR uses to keep balances accurate.
Who can open it: HR Settings needs HR write permission. Balance figures are sensitive — this guide explains the mechanics, not anyone's actual numbers.
Leave Types vs Leave Plans vs Balances
These are easy to confuse, so it helps to see how they stack up.
Leave Types
The kinds of leave (Annual, Sick, Unpaid, Family Responsibility, …). Types are the vocabulary the whole leave system uses. Click "New Leave Type" or the pencil on a row to open the "Leave Type" dialog:
Name, Colour and Description.
Paid Leave? — paid or unpaid.
Certificate Required? — e.g. a sick note.
Sick Leave (BCEA rules)? — applies the statutory sick-leave rules.
Available for manual clock entries? — whether the type can be used when a day is captured by hand.
How is this leave handled? — "Manager approves" or "Acknowledge (immediate)". Acknowledge-only types are recorded straight away without an approval step.
Offer conversion to Annual? / Offer conversion to Unpaid? — what the requester is offered when the type's balance runs out.
Applies to (gender).
Annual Limit (days, 0 = unlimited).
SimplePay Mapping ID — the SimplePay leave type this maps to (see How SimplePay mapping works).
The list shows Color, Name, Paid, Certificate and Handling for each type.
Leave Plan
The rules per type for a group of employees. The tab lists the plans (Leave Plan Name, Leave Type, Cycle, Grant Method, Entitlement, carry-over) and "New Policy" opens the "Entitlement Policy" dialog:
Policy Name and Leave Type.
Cycle Length (months).
Grant Method — "Accrual-based (monthly earn)" or upfront.
Base Entitlement (days) and Max Entitlement (days).
Max Carry-Over (days), Carry-Over Expiry (months) and the Carry-Over Anchor (the leave cycle or the financial year, with "Financial year ends at the end of" and "Forfeiture effective from (FY year)").
A plan is assigned to an employee — usually at onboarding (wizard step 7) — and that's what seeds their balances.
Company Shutdown
The December/January closure everyone must take leave for. Click "New Shutdown" and set the Name, Year, Period (start and end date), Leave Type and Status. The days each employee owes are worked out from the working days in that range against their own schedule, so there is nothing per employee to maintain.
A shutdown is a reserve, not a booking: it shows on Leave Analytics and is subtracted in the balance projection, but no leave request is created.
The balance
An employee's available balance for a type is simply:
Entitlement (opening grant) + Accrued (earned over time) − Taken (approved leave used) = Available
So approved leave reduces the balance, and accrual tops it up on the plan's schedule.
Keeping balances accurate
Balances can drift from the approved-leave history over time (corrections, mid-year changes, data fixes). The main day-to-day tool is on the employee's record: adjust a balance directly for one employee when a one-off correction is needed (see Employee page: Leave Balances, which also has "Recalculate cycle" and "Check monthly rate...").
HR Settings also holds a set of bulk maintenance dialogs:
Drift Resolution Wizard — steps through balances whose "taken" no longer matches the approved-request history, one at a time.
Reconcile Annual Leave Balances (one-shot) — re-bases every Annual balance to a snapshot date and replays accruals, for the start of a new cycle.
Revert Annual Reconciliation (undo) — restores each Annual balance from its daily snapshot after a reconciliation.
Rebuild accrual leave balances — a one-shot rebuild from a snapshot date that replays accruals up to today.
Unstick stuck Stand-In Manager steps — force-completes old stand-in selection steps that are blocking a leave request.
The launch buttons for these bulk tools are currently switched off on the screen. If you need one of them run, ask an administrator rather than looking for the button.
Good to know
Set types and plans up before onboarding so a plan can be assigned in the wizard.
Unpaid types still record leave, but they don't pay — and they show up as "missing"/unpaid time in attendance.
Sick leave beyond the entitlement is charged as Unpaid at the time it is taken, so new negative sick balances should not appear.
The maintenance tools are powerful — they rewrite balances and are audited; run them only when you understand what they'll change.
Related guides
Leave request statuses field definitions — what each leave-request status means.
Manage your team's leave — how managers approve the requests that draw down these balances.
Employee page: Leave Balances — one person's balances and the per-employee tools.
HR Settings - organisation setup — the other tabs of HR Settings.