Advanced: Leave & Absences

For users who already understand the basics — this guide covers how cantonal holidays affect vacation day counts, pro-rating for part-time employees and mid-year hires, carryover mechanics, the medical certificate workflow in depth, and auto-approval rules.

Cantonal Holiday Impact on Vacation Days

Switzerland has no single national holiday calendar. Each of the 26 cantons observes a different set of public holidays. The system resolves the correct calendar for each employee from the canton set on their profile.

When an employee submits a vacation request for Mon–Fri and Wednesday is a cantonal public holiday, the system counts 4 working days, not 5. The holiday is excluded automatically.

Practical implications:

• Employees in Geneva and employees in Appenzell Innerrhoden may have very different effective vacation-day consumption for the same calendar week.
• If an employee moves cantons, update their profile before approving pending leave. Old approved requests won't be recalculated, but any new requests will use the new canton.
• The most commonly overlooked holidays are half-day canton observances — the system currently counts only full-day holidays in the deduction. Half-days are informational only.

Pro-Rating for Part-Time Employees

A part-time employee's annual vacation entitlement is automatically pro-rated based on their work percentage:

Annual entitlement × (work percentage ÷ 100) = allocated vacation days

A 60% employee entitled to 25 days receives 15 days. This calculation runs when the yearly allocation is generated — it does not auto-adjust if someone's percentage changes mid-year.

If the work percentage changes during the year, you'll need to manually edit the employee's vacation allocation record for that year to reflect the correct pro-rated figure. The system will not prompt you.

Working-day calculations within a request also respect the contract. For a Monday–Thursday employee, a Friday in the requested range simply doesn't count — it was never a working day for them.

Pro-Rating for Mid-Year Hires

For employees who join partway through the year, tick the Pro-Rate checkbox on their vacation allocation. The system will calculate:

Annual entitlement × (remaining calendar days in year ÷ 365) × (work percentage ÷ 100)

This is rounded to the nearest 0.5 day. Review the generated number before saving — the system's date math is based on the hire date stored on the employee's profile, so confirm it's correct first.

For employees who leave mid-year, you'll need to manually recalculate. There is no auto-deallocation for leavers; create a note in the allocation for audit purposes before closing out the employee's account.

Carryover Days

Each year's vacation allocation has an optional carryover days field. You set this manually when creating the new year's allocation — it represents unused days rolled forward from the prior year.

The system does not automatically carry over days; that decision is yours and must comply with your employment contracts. Swiss law allows carryover but also allows companies to set expiry dates for carried-over days.

Best practice:

1. At the start of each year, check each employee's remaining balance from the prior year (Vacation Allocations → prior year → Used / Remaining).
2. Decide how many days to carry forward per your HR policy.
3. Enter that number in the Carryover field of the new year's allocation.

Carryover days are added to that year's full allocation — there's no separate tracking bucket. If a carryover expires on a specific date, you'll need to manage that with a manual adjustment.

Medical Certificate Workflow in Depth

The medical certificate process is entirely manager-driven — there is no automatic trigger.

How it works:

1. A sick leave is filed and acknowledged.
2. The manager clicks Require certificate and sets a deadline.
3. The employee receives a notification. Their sick leave view shows the certificate requirement and deadline prominently.
4. The employee uploads the certificate (PDF, JPEG, or PNG, max 10 MB). The file is stored encrypted — only users with appropriate access can view it.
5. The manager sees the certificate as received; the sick leave record is updated.

Edge cases to know:

• If the deadline passes without an upload, nothing happens automatically. There is no auto-escalation. The manager needs to follow up manually or change the sick leave status.
• If an employee uploads the wrong file (wrong person's certificate, unreadable scan), the manager can reject the upload and request a new one.
• Certificates are permanently associated with the sick leave record and are retained for the full audit history, even after the sick leave is closed.

When to require a certificate: Swiss law allows employers to require a medical certificate after the third consecutive sick day, or after a certain number of sick days per year. Your HR policy should define the threshold; the system lets you enforce it on a case-by-case basis.

Auto-Approval Rules

Vacation requests are auto-approved in exactly two situations:

1. The employee has no manager — the system has no one to route the request to, so it approves immediately.
2. A manager files the request for one of their direct reports — the act of a manager creating the request on behalf of their employee is treated as simultaneous approval.

In all other cases, the request goes to Pending and waits for an explicit decision. Nobody can approve their own request — this is hardcoded and cannot be overridden, even for admins.

If you need to approve a request quickly and the regular manager is unavailable, an admin can approve from the tenant-wide Leave Requests → All Pending view without being the direct manager.

Related Guides

• Modules-UrlaubAbwesenheit — basic setup and daily workflow
• Advanced: Zeiterfassung — how approved leave adjusts the hour balance target