Extended Leave Without Pay (LWOP)

When an employee takes a period of Leave Without Pay of more than one week during the year, this does not have to count as "continuous employment". Instead, you can choose to extend their anniversary date by the amount of unpaid leave taken (not including the first week). For example, if an employee takes two weeks’ unpaid leave, their next anniversary date (i.e. when they next become entitled to annual holidays) is pushed out by one week. To extend their anniversary date, simply enter the dates of the unpaid leave in the fields below.

Note that this does not apply to any paid holidays, parental leave, volunteers leave, ACC weekly compensation, unpaid sick, unpaid bereavement or unpaid family violence leave. Refer to section 16 Holidays Act 2003 for more information. http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2003/0129/latest/DLM236874.html

Please note this functionality is supported for standard accrual method only. This functionality is enabled for all companies in New Zealand environments by default. To disable the ability to enter extended leave without pay for a company, you can untick the option under the annual leave rule template. However, any extended leave without pay which has already been added should be removed first.

Entering Extended LWOP

To use this functionality, navigate to an employees Leave Summary Screen and click on the "Extended LWOP".  Note: this is hidden for users with read-only access to DataPay.

This opens the Extended Leave Without Pay pop-up.

Leave Without Pay of more than one week can be entered into the Start and End Date fields. On saving, this will push out the following anniversary date(s), and automatically merge the employee's open Pay Packet(s).

Note: There is no link between the dates entered on this screen, and leave taken in a pay packet. Adding a leave request or a timesheet would be a separate action.

If leave is entered incorrectly, this can be deleted.

How is annual leave accrual impacted?

Prior to entering extended leave without pay (effective as at 25/Feb/2020)

After entering extended leave without pay (effective as at 25/Feb/2020)

As you can see in the example above, the accrual has decreased. This is because we do not accrue on the part of the Extended Leave Without Pay which is greater than one week (8 days in this scenario).

Note: If the leave falls in the Pay Period of a closed or finalised Pay Run, you will need to recalculate the accrual.

Calculations of the above example:

In both scenarios, when the employee reaches their next anniversary date, they'll receive 4 weeks of annual leave. The difference now is that the current holiday year is slightly longer than previous years.