Set up leave types and holidays

Add the kinds of leave your employees can request, and the company holidays that leave requests skip.

Leave types are the kinds of leave your employees can request, such as annual leave or sick leave. Company holidays are days off for the whole company. Set up both before your team starts to request leave. Until you add a leave type, employees cannot select Request leave.

Before you begin

You need the Owner or Admin role. Only owners and admins see Settings → Leave.
Plan your leave types first. You can edit a leave type later, but you cannot delete it.

Add a leave type

Go to Settings → Leave.
Under Leave types, select Add type.
In Name, enter the name of the leave type, for example "Annual leave".
In Days per year, enter how many days each employee gets in a year, from 0 to 365.
Choose a Reset cycle: Calendar year or Employment anniversary. The next sections explain the difference.
Tick the options you need: Paid, Unlimited, and Allow half-days.
In Most unused days carried over, enter how many unused days can move into the next year. Leave it at 0 if none should move.
Select Add type.

The form starts with 12 days, Calendar year, and Paid and Allow half-days ticked. After you add the type, Kelola shows Leave type added and the type appears under Leave types.

You cannot delete a leave type after you add it. You can edit it later, but some changes are locked once people use it. See Edit a leave type below. Each leave type needs a different name.

Choose the options

Paid: a request must fit the employee's leave balance. Kelola does not accept a request for more days than the employee has left. Untick Paid for unpaid leave. Kelola does not limit unpaid leave to the days per year, so an employee's days left can go below zero. To show ∞ instead, also tick Unlimited.
Unlimited: the type has no day limit. Days per year turns off, and employees see ∞ instead of the days they have left.
Allow half-days: employees can make the first day, the last day, or both ends of a request a half day. Each half day counts as 0.5 days. With this option off, employees can request full days only.

Choose a reset cycle

The reset cycle decides when a balance starts again. Kelola counts each request in the cycle that its first day falls in.

Calendar year: an employee who joins during the year gets part of the days per year. Kelola calculates it from their Join date and rounds it to the nearest half day. For example, with 12 days per year, an employee who joins on 1 July gets 6 days that year.
Employment anniversary: each employee's balance runs from their Join date to the day before its next anniversary, then starts again. For example, someone who joined on 15 June gets a new balance every 15 June. They get the full days per year from the start.

An employee with no Join date on their record gets the full days per year with either option.

When a new cycle starts, a person gets the days per year plus their unused days from the last cycle, up to Most unused days carried over. Days in a pending request count as used. With 0, each cycle starts again from the days per year.

Edit a leave type

Go to Settings → Leave.
Select the pencil icon on the leave type's row. Edit leave type opens.
Change the Name, the Days per year, the Reset cycle, Most unused days carried over, or the options.
Select Save.

Kelola shows Leave type saved. An edit applies to new requests only:

Requests that people already sent keep their number of days, whether they are pending or approved.
A balance that already started this cycle keeps its days. Kelola sets a person's days for a cycle when they send their first request in it. People who have not requested this type yet in the current cycle, and every new cycle, get the new Days per year.
You can change Reset cycle and Unlimited only until someone has a balance for the type. After that, Kelola refuses the change, because it would change cycles that already hold days. If you need different rules, add a new leave type.

For example, in March you change annual leave from 12 to 14 days. Ana already requested leave in January, so she keeps 12 days this year. Ben has not requested any leave this year, so he gets 14. From next year, both get 14.

Every leave type you add or edit goes into the audit log as Leave type, with the old and the new values. See Review the audit log.

Add company holidays

Company holidays are days off for everyone in your company. Leave requests skip them, so they do not use up anyone's leave balance.

Go to Settings → Leave.
Under Holidays, enter a Name, for example "New Year's Day".
Pick the Date.
Optional: select Repeats every year for a holiday on the same date every year, such as New Year's Day.
Select Add.

Kelola shows Holiday added and lists the holiday below the form.

A new or removed holiday also changes leave requests that cover that day. Kelola recounts every pending request, and every approved request that has not started yet. It moves the difference on the person's leave balance and sends a Leave days recounted notification to the person and to their approvers. Leave that has started or already passed never changes.

A holiday that repeats every year falls on the same date each year, starting in the year of the date you pick. Its row says Repeats every year from that year. Earlier years do not change. A repeating holiday on 29 February falls only in leap years.Holidays that move each year, such as Eid al-Fitr or Chinese New Year, do not fall on the same date. Do not mark them as repeating. Add each year's date before that year starts.You can add only one holiday per day. A repeating holiday takes its day in every year from its start, so you cannot add another holiday on that day in those years.

Remove a holiday

Select the trash icon next to the holiday.
Kelola asks you to confirm. Select Remove, or select Cancel to keep the holiday.

Kelola shows Holiday removed. New leave requests then count that day like any other day. Requests that people already sent keep the number of days they had.

See how Kelola counts leave days

When an employee requests leave, Kelola counts only the working days in the dates they pick.

Only the days of the person's work week count. That is the work week of their work schedule, or your company's work week if the work schedule has none. Most companies use Monday to Friday. See Set up your company.
No date on your holidays list counts, whatever its type. This includes every year of a holiday that repeats.
If the dates contain no working days at all, Kelola does not accept the request.

For example, a request from Monday to Friday uses 4 days if Wednesday is a holiday. A request from Friday to Monday uses 3 days for someone who works Monday to Saturday, and 2 days for someone who works Monday to Friday.

Kelola saves the number of days when the employee sends the request. If you change a work week later, requests that were already sent keep their number of days.

Kelola counts the days at the moment the employee submits the request. If you add or remove a holiday later, requests that were already submitted keep their day count. Add your holidays early.

Holidays also appear in two other places:

Managers and admins see them on My team → Team calendar.
On Reports, a holiday is not a work day, so no one is counted as absent on it.

Both places show a repeating holiday in every year.

Handle unpaid leave in payroll

Kelola tracks paid and unpaid leave separately. My team → Team calendar shows approved paid and unpaid leave in different colours. Reports list the approved Paid leave and Unpaid leave days in separate columns.

Kelola deducts approved unpaid leave from pay automatically. When you run payroll, each person's approved days of an unpaid leave type in that month become an Unpaid leave line under deductions, for example "Unpaid leave (2 days)". The amount per day is the monthly base pay plus other taxable monthly earnings, divided by the days in the month. The deduction lowers the income tax (PPh 21) base, but not the BPJS wage. A draft pay run keeps its numbers, so after a leave change, delete the draft and run payroll again. See Run payroll.

Next steps

Onboard your team
Request leave: what your employees see when they request leave.
Approve requests

Set your currency and number format

Onboard your team