In addition to managing your payroll in PayFit, you can also make use of our HR features, combining HR and Payroll in one platform. The module is available on our Standard and Premium plan and includes the following features;

Tip: If you're on our Light plan, and you'd like to use PayFit's HR features, please get in touch to discuss upgrading your package.

Create a smoother experience for new employees by creating an onboarding questionnaire to gather employee information.
Allow employees to manage their leaves from their employee space.
Create your org chart and make it visible to only admins, or employees too.
Allow access for employees and managers to document their regular 1:1 reviews.
Create workflows for indirect managers to receive requests to approve leaves, expenses and time-tracking when the employee's usual manager isn't available.

This article focuses on the leave management feature but please take a look at the articles above to explore the additional features.

Feature Overview

✅ Admins can allow employees to book their own leave from their employee space.

✅ Managers are notified via email when an employee requests annual leave. Once the manager approves or declines the request, the employee also receives an email.

✅ Employees can see all of their leaves in their employee space, as well as their entitlement (Available, Taken, Used). The entitlement can also be displayed on the payslip.

✅ Employees can see a full list of leaves in their employee space, including those that have been approved, rejected, cancelled or are pending.

✅ PayFit calculates leave-related payments such as Buying/Selling Annual Leave, Time off in lieu, or Payment in Lieu of Holiday when an employee's contract is terminated.

✅ Employees can see when their colleagues are on leave.

❌ Multiple approval levels aren't possible. Only one manager can be assigned to an employee to approve leaves.

❌ Employees can't book time off in hours. It's only possible to book annual leave in half or full days.

❌ Employees have to be on payroll in order to submit leaves. It's not possible to have the leave management tool without processing payroll for the employee too.

❌ Neither employees nor managers can edit a leave request. If a change is required, they will either need to cancel the existing leave and re-add the leave with updated information or ask an admin to adjust the leave in the admin space.

❌ PayFit's HR functionality is an additional feature. If you can't see the validations tab on the left menu, this may not be included in your current package. If you're interested in finding out more, please get in touch.

Enter your company's annual leave settings

When you first set up your PayFit account, you can set up your preferred annual leave settings.

From the left, choose Company Settings, then Payroll Set Up.
Under the Leaves section, click Edit Annual Leave.

Here you can choose settings such as:

Whether you track annual leave in days or hours.
Number of days given per leave year (or whether to apply unlimited).
Which UK country's bank holidays you'd like to apply.
Whether you'd like to include bank holidays as part of annual leave.
Whether you allow employees to carry over leaves.
How holiday pay is displayed on the payslip.

If you're changing your annual leave settings after your account is set up, the changes only apply to future employees. To apply these changes to existing employees, you'll need to go to change this separately.

To make the changes per employee:

From the employees' record, click the Leaves tab.
Under the Annual leave section, click Customise annual leave policy.
Make the necessary changes, then click Save.

To make the changes in bulk:

From the left, choose Imports, then More Imports.
Under the Leaves section, click Edit Annual Leave Settings.
Click Download a template.
Make the necessary changes to the downloaded template, then follow the on-screen instructions to import the file.

Allow employees to book annual leaves

From the left, choose Access & emails, then Calendar access.
In the top-right, click Manage activation.
To enable one employee at a time, simply toggle on the Enabled button, or click Enable all to enable access for all employees.
Click Close.

The employee will receive an email notification to let them know they can now access the Leaves section in their employee space.

Validating leaves in the admin space

From the left, choose Validations, then Leave.
You'll see all leave requests categorised based on their status; pending, pending cancellation, validated, refused or cancelled.
To approve a leave, click the relevant leave under the Pending tab.
Here you can view:
- the dates and length of the request.
- a calendar showing any other team leaves in the same period.
- details of the employee's leave entitlement (click See Total).
You can choose to Approve or Reject the leave.

The employee receives an email to confirm whether their leave request was approved or rejected.

Reviewing leaves in the admin space

From the left, choose Validations, then Leave.
Select the relevant tab to view leaves under each category. E.g. Pending cancellation.
Tip: You can also export all leaves in this category by clicking the Export all requests button.
Click the relevant request to see details of the leave.
You can see the details of the leave in this section.

Tip: Click the small question mark by My Validations to see who approved the leave. Or to delete a leave, click the Actions (...) button.

You can also check an employee's leaves from the employee's record, on the Leaves tab, under the Annual leaves section.

Running reports on employee leaves

There are a few pre-set PayFit reports related to leaves. To locate these:

From the left, choose Reports, then Company reports.
Under the HR reports section, to view leaves for this month, click Leaves. Or to view all leaves in this tax year, click Yearly leaves.
The window that appears contains two reports. Under each, you can download it as an Excel or CSV.

Alternatively, you can create a custom report. To do this:

From the left, choose Reports, then Custom reports.
Click Add a Report.
From the Dimensions drop-down, choose any fields you'd like to display on the report.
Choose whether to run the report for the current month or historical months.
Choose whether to export as a CSV or XLSX.
Click Save and download.

For further information about Custom Reports, please refer to our Help Centre article.