Help Center

Selecting Your Country and Region

Head into the Settings tab and open General. In the Location Settings card there are two dropdowns: Country and Region / State. Pick the country your location operates in, then the specific region — regional holidays (like anniversary days) differ by region, so this matters for getting the right list. Click Save changes at the bottom of the page to apply.

Automatic Schedule

Once the country and region are saved, the Public Holidays card at the bottom of the General settings page automatically shows that region's public holidays for the current year and the following year, displayed in chronological order. A year dropdown lets you review each year's list. Review the list to make sure everything looks correct for your location.

When to Add Manually

If a public holiday is missing from the automatic list — or your business observes an extra closed day you want treated like one — you can add it manually.

How to Add

1. In the Public Holidays card on the General settings page, click Add holiday.
2. Enter the Holiday name and select the Date using the date picker.
3. Click Add holiday in the pop-up. Manually added holidays are marked "Added manually" and can be edited or deleted with the pencil and bin icons; automatic holidays cannot be changed.

Notifications

On the Timesheets page, RosterMates identifies when a date is a public holiday and displays a banner with the holiday name. You may see a warning stating that the public holiday table is unavailable.

Unlocking the Table

The system can build the public holiday table for you, but it requires approved data first. To unlock the table:

1. Approve the Previous Day's time records.
2. Approve the Holiday's time records.

Use the Approve button (the tick icon) to approve each day.

Adding Employees

Once unlocked, you can add rows to the table for each employee. Important: Only add employees who would _normally_ work on that day — this is the "otherwise working day" test that determines holiday pay entitlement.

Did Not Work (Average Hours)

If the employee normally works this day but did not work on the holiday:

• Select "Did Not Work".
• Enter the average number of hours they normally work.
• The system uses this to pay them for the day off (relevant daily pay).

Did Work (Alternative Holiday)

If the employee actually worked on the public holiday:

• Select "Did Work".
• The system records that the employee is entitled to an alternative holiday on top of their holiday pay.

Table Tools

Delete Row: Right-click a row and select "Delete Row" to remove an employee.

Clear All: Use the "Clear All" button to reset the entire table.

The Autofill Button

Manually building the table can be time-consuming for large teams. The Autofill button populates the entire table for you automatically: employees who clocked in on the holiday are added as "Did Work", and employees who normally work that weekday but didn't are added with their average hours.

Prerequisites (Workday Patterns)

To use Autofill successfully, you must have Work Patterns filled out for your employees (on the Management page's Work Days tab). This lets the system know exactly who normally works on that specific day.

The rule

Six national holidays can move when they fall on a weekend: Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, 2 January, Waitangi Day and Anzac Day. The calendar date is always the real public holiday. But for an employee who would not otherwise work that Saturday or Sunday, the Holidays Act treats the holiday as falling on the following Monday instead (Tuesday for the second holiday of the Christmas and New Year pairs, because the Monday is taken by the first one). Waitangi Day and Anzac Day move to the Monday from either weekend day.

So the Monday or Tuesday is only a potential public holiday: real for the employees it has been moved for, an ordinary day for everyone else. Regional anniversary days, Good Friday, Easter Monday, King's Birthday, Labour Day and Matariki never move.

How RosterMates shows it

• Everywhere holidays appear (roster date headers, the timesheet day strip and banner, Settings → General → Public Holidays) the calendar date shows as the public holiday and the Monday / Tuesday shows as a potential holiday, labelled (Mondayised) or (Tuesdayised) in amber with a dashed edge.
• Nobody is moved automatically. The Mondayised list for a holiday is managed on the Timesheets page, on the calendar date's holiday table, and starts empty.

The two lists on the calendar date

Open the holiday table on the calendar date (for example Sat 25 Dec). It has two lists:

• Public holiday table — employees for whom the calendar date is an otherwise working day. Worked → time-and-a-half (HW) plus an alternative holiday (AH). Didn't work → paid their usual hours for the day (HNW).
• Mondayised / Tuesdayised list — employees for whom the calendar date is not an otherwise working day. For them the calendar date becomes an ordinary day: no HW, no AH, no HNW, even if they clock in. Their public holiday is the Monday / Tuesday instead.

Employees in neither list keep the calendar date as their public holiday: if they work they are paid time-and-a-half (HW) with no alternative holiday, and if they don't work they are paid nothing for the day.

Auto-Fill tests every employee's work pattern (or, without one, the timesheet lookback from Settings → General) for the calendar date and fills both lists at once. Add or remove people afterwards; nothing changes until you press Save Holiday Table. Saving locks the list onto the Monday / Tuesday.

The Monday / Tuesday

Open the holiday table on the potential date (for example Mon 27 Dec). It lists exactly the employees from the Mondayised list and nobody else — the list cannot be changed here. For each one, tick whether they worked and, if not, enter their usual hours for that day. Worked → HW + AH; didn't work → HNW for the hours entered; no hours entered → nothing paid. Auto-Fill ticks Worked from the saved timesheet and fills hours from the work pattern or the timesheet lookback for that weekday. For every other employee this is an ordinary working day.

Each list explains itself in the table: the panel at the top of the holiday table says who belongs in each list and what will happen to them, and every list carries a one-line reminder of its pay outcome.

Elsewhere

• Summary and payroll exports (Xero, Crystal, iPayroll, Smartly, CSV): worked hours count as holiday hours on each employee's own date — the calendar date unless they are on the moved list, in which case the Monday / Tuesday — and not-worked hours come from that date's holiday table.
• Settings → General → Public Holidays: a potential holiday is tagged with its real date and how many employees are listed. Who moves opens a read-only view of the list, with a link to the Timesheets page.

The Mondayise weekend holidays switch on Settings → General turns this off, in which case every employee has the holiday on the Monday or Tuesday as the holiday feed lists it. The switch only appears for New Zealand locations.

The lookback

For employees without a work pattern, RosterMates applies the otherwise-working-day test in the Employment Leave Act to approved timesheets and approved leave. With the default of 50% of the past 13 weeks, an employee counts as normally working a Friday when they worked, or were on paid or unpaid leave, on at least half of the 13 Fridays before the holiday. The window shortens to the employee's start date, and restarts the day after parental, ACC or volunteers leave ends. Their usual hours are the average paid hours per day over the pay periods that started in the 93 days before the pay period the holiday falls in (Settings → General → Pay period).

When there is little history

Weeks before your first approved timesheet are unknown, not "not worked", so they are left out of the test, and the same goes for pay periods with no timesheets when the hours are averaged. Auto-Fill warns you which employees this affected so you can check them; with no timesheet history at all the day is not treated as a working day, and you can still add the employee by hand.

Holiday outcomes flow into the Summary page as "HW" (holiday worked, shown as "HW+AH" when an alternative holiday was earned) and "HNW" (holiday not worked, paid), and into the payroll exports — for example PayHero's "Public Hol W" / "Public Hol NW" columns and iPayroll's time-and-a-half element for holiday hours worked.