Finding the right holiday calendar for a person

Why is it important to choose the right public holiday calendar?

The main purpose of the public holiday calendar is to mark public holidays as such in the journal, in the calendar overview or in the group calendar (green coloring).

Vacation requests: for each public vacation in a vacation period, of course, no vacation day is used up, even if it concerns public holidays that only some of the employees in an organization can consume (e.g. if persons with Protestant religious affiliation have a public holiday on Good Friday guaranteed by the company agreement, whereas for other employees with other or no religious affiliation, Good Friday is noted in the calendar as a normal working day).

Where is the public holiday calendar entered?

The public holiday calendar is selected in the person master record in the Settings/Time recording [LINK follows soon]  tab under “Public holiday calendar”.
As a rule, the selection is made when the person is created.
A later change may be necessary, for example, if the person's place of work changes (new location) and other regional public holidays apply at the new location.

What needs to be taken into account when creating a new person?

If your organization has locations that are located in another federal state or in another country and you create a person who does not work at the headquarters of your organization but at another location, please be sure to assign the person's future location (“Groups” tab) before selecting the holiday calendar.
This step is necessary as the display of the available public holiday calendars may be tied to the location!

The most important public holiday calendars for Austria

It is relevant for the selection whether certain days are classified as public holidays or as working days in the collective agreement relevant for the person to be processed or in the current company agreement if they fall on a day other than a Sunday.
Specifically, these are 24.12. and 31.12. of each year.

The following public holiday calendars are available as standard for Austria:

What do I need to take into account when changing the public holiday calendar?

Any change is also automatically retroactive. It is therefore important to check before making a change whether there is an open leave request or other absence request that includes a day that is valued differently due to a change in the public holiday calendar.

Please also do not carry out any retroactive accounting for other reasons that go back in time beyond the date on which the public holiday calendar was changed, as this may result in undesirable changes to the leave quota!

Example: an employee who works in St. Pölten and has entered the Austria-NÖ public holiday calendar applies for leave from 11 to 22.11.2024. As 15.11 is automatically work-free for him, it is stated that this application represents a leave consumption of 9 days.
Before the vacation request is approved, the employee is transferred to Vienna and the “Austria statutory” calendar applies. As a result of the change, the vacation consumption for 11 to 22.11.2024 is now 10 days, as 15.11 is considered a normal working day.

What else needs to be considered?

The next important step after selecting the appropriate public holiday calendar is to define the working times for public holidays in the weekly program

This is particularly relevant if 24.12. or 31.12. are considered a working day if these two dates do not fall on a Sunday.
It is also relevant if the commercial holiday calendar applies, but a different rule applies for Christmas Saturdays (= the 4 Saturdays before the Advent Sundays) than for Saturdays outside the Advent weeks.

You can find more information on this under “Creating Christmas and New Year's Eve correctly/daily programs for 24.12. and 31.12” [LINK follows soon].

Please make sure that the correct working times are entered for all weekdays, but also for public holidays or other exceptions, so that no subsequent corrections are necessary!

Keywords: Christmas, New Year's Eve, public holidays, calendar, bank day