When a public holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday, and a gazetted Public Holiday is set for a weekday, some states and territories will have these days as substitute public holidays, and in others, there will be additional public holiday days as each state and territory government is responsible for declaring gazetted public holidays.
This will impact employers when determining rosters and pay over this period.
Additional public holidays: Where an additional public holiday is declared, the actual public holiday and the additional day are both treated as public holidays.
Substituted public holidays: Where a substitute public holiday is declared, only the substitute day is generally regarded as the public holiday.
This article offers 2 options on how to handle paying a public holiday when it falls on a weekend (and penalties apply for some employees on the weekend), but is also to be paid as a public holiday on a weekday for other employees.
Note: If in doubt about how to pay your employees, contact Fair Work.
New Year falls on a Saturday; for some staff, the Saturday will be a public holiday, while it is also gazetted for Monday, and other staff will have Monday as the public holiday.
Option 1
Set Up Locations in HR, Locations and Add. Using New Year's Day as an example, set up 2 Locations, i.e., New Year Saturday and New Year Monday as the Location Name and then select the drop down menu to select the Locate In.
Go into the Employee Details, select the employee and go to Employment, Employment. From the drop down next to Location, select one of the newly created locations.
Note: By having the locations linked to the employees, and the public holidays set up to pay to a certain location, for those who work on either of those public holidays, it will pay as per the award conditions.
Option 2
If you don’t want to set up locations, separate the employees to be paid into 2 groups. Group 1 for those who will be paid a public holiday for the Saturday, and group 2 for those who will be paid a public holiday for the Monday.
Create the Saturday public holiday first by going to Setup, Public Holidays. Select Add, and create the public holiday, or modify the public holiday date if it is already in the list of public holidays.
Process the wages for all employees who are to be paid for the public holiday on the Saturday.
Once those pays have been completed and saved, go back into Setup, Public Holidays, and change the date of the Saturday public holiday to the Monday so that the Saturday will not be picked up by wages when you do group 2's timesheets.
Process the remainder of wages for employees to be paid the public holiday on the Monday. When all wages are completed, go to Setup, Public Holidays. Select Add, and recreate the public holiday for the Saturday so that there is a record of it in your database.
Whilst we try to help you get the most benefit from the program, any award information in this fact sheet is a suggested interpretation only from information provided to us, so we strongly recommend consulting your association or award wording for total verification or contacting Fair Work.