A spreadsheet for every care company
Several of your clients employ people on irregular hours: care workers, bank staff, hospitality staff, casual warehouse workers. When those employees take holiday, their pay depends on past pay or hours, calculated in a way each client has chosen, often with help from their adviser.
The bureau does the maths. Each client has a spreadsheet, maintained by the administrator who runs their payroll. It pulls past pay from exported reports, applies the client's method and gives the figure to key in. When the administrator is away, nobody else wants to touch it.
Why this ends up in spreadsheets
Payroll software includes holiday pay features, but clients' chosen methods, reference periods, exclusions and treatment of overtime or commission vary, and the software may not match the method a client has decided on. The spreadsheet fills the gap. Over time each spreadsheet grows its own formulas, fixes and exceptions.
Which method is right for a client is a question for the client and their adviser, and the rules have changed over the years. This article is not about that choice. It is about applying whatever the client has chosen consistently, every period, without a fragile spreadsheet.
What spreadsheet workings cost
Formulas break when an export changes layout. Figures are keyed into the payroll by hand, which adds errors. Each spreadsheet depends on the one person who understands it. If a client or an employee questions a holiday pay figure, reconstructing the working can be slow. And the time spent on holiday pay grows with every irregular-hours client you take on.
| Spreadsheet problem | What a calculation service does |
|---|---|
| Export layout changes break formulas | Reads pay history directly |
| Different logic per client, undocumented | Each client's method written as a configured rule |
| Figures typed into payroll | Figures imported with the run |
| Workings hard to show later | Workings stored per employee per period |
| One person understands it | Anyone can run it |
How we build holiday pay calculation
- For each client, we record the method the client has chosen, with their adviser where relevant: reference period, which pay elements count, how weeks without pay are treated, and any accrual approach.
- Pay history per employee is read from your payroll software through its API or reports.
- When holiday is taken in a period, the service calculates the holiday pay for each employee using that client's method.
- Figures are returned for import with the run, with a one-page working per employee showing the weeks used and the result.
- The administrator reviews the figures alongside other variance checks before sign-off.
- When a client changes its method, the new rule applies from the date they choose, and older periods keep the method that applied then.
We implement the method the client decides. We do not advise on which method is lawful or appropriate; that is for the client and their adviser.
Holiday pay without the fragile spreadsheet
Holiday pay figures arrive with the run, calculated the same way each time for each client. Anyone covering can process them. Every figure has its working stored, so questions can be answered quickly. And the bureau can take on more irregular-hours clients without adding another spreadsheet for each one.
Recognise this?
- You keep a holiday pay spreadsheet for several clients.
- Each spreadsheet works differently and only one person understands it.
- Holiday pay figures are keyed into the payroll by hand.
- Showing how a figure was worked out takes time.
- Exports changing layout have broken the formulas before.