Leave and pay over the builders' annual shutdown
How a contractor plans leave and pay for site staff over the year-end shutdown in Achekam payroll, including workers short of leave and holiday gaps.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Construction businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Sites close at the end of the year. The cranes are tied down, the site office is locked, and most of the crew travel home for the holidays. For a few weeks there is no work to pay for, but there are people to pay: those with leave owing, those without, and a handful kept on as security or for urgent repairs.
Getting the shutdown right in payroll is mostly a matter of timing. Leave has to be applied for and approved before the December run is approved, because an approved run is never recalculated. This article sets out a routine for a contractor using Achekam's payroll.
Planning the shutdown against each worker's leave balance
Start in October or November, not in the last week before closing. Achekam payroll keeps annual, sick, family responsibility and unpaid leave, with leave accruing monthly. Pull each site worker's annual leave balance and sort the crew into three groups:
- Enough leave to cover every working day of the shutdown.
- Some leave, but not enough; the rest will be unpaid unless you decide otherwise.
- Working through: security, plant maintenance, emergency call-outs.
Give each worker a short note of which group they are in and how many days of leave the shutdown will use. Arguments in January about missing pay usually start with a worker who did not know.
There is no separate "shutdown" leave type. Achekam has no maternity, parental or study leave type either, and new leave types cannot be added, so the closure has to be booked as annual leave, unpaid leave, or a mix of both.
Annual leave over the closure, approved by line managers
Each worker's shutdown days go in as a leave application. A line manager approves leave for their own team, and nobody approves their own leave. On a building contractor that usually means the site agent or foreman approves the crew, and the contracts manager approves the site agents.
Approving early has a second benefit: the leave balances that carry into January are right from the first day back.
Put the closing and reopening dates in writing to every site before any applications are made, so each foreman captures the same days for every worker. A crew member who applies for the shutdown from a different first day than the rest of the crew will end up with a different balance, and the difference is hard to trace once the site has emptied.
Workers short of leave: unpaid leave and the warning payroll gets
For workers in the second group, the days not covered by annual leave are booked as unpaid leave. Unpaid leave does not cut pay automatically. Payroll is warned and decides what to do.
That decision is a variable input for the period. Pay runs can be monthly, fortnightly or weekly, and each period's overtime, commission, allowances, reimbursements and unpaid leave are entered as variable inputs. So a fortnightly site crew whose pay period straddles the closure will need the unpaid days entered on the right run, not the one before or after.
Public holidays inside the shutdown, and the Nigerian and Kenyan calendar gap
The shutdown usually swallows several public holidays. Whether a public holiday counts as a leave day affects how many days of leave each worker uses.
Here a Nigerian or Kenyan contractor must be careful. Leave days in Achekam are counted against South African public holidays, and the built-in entitlements follow South African law, even for a Nigerian or Kenyan employer. Before approving shutdown leave, count the working days in the closure yourself against your own country's gazetted holidays, compare with the days Achekam counts, and record any adjustment you make in writing.
South African contractors can check the legal minimums in the Department of Employment and Labour's basic guide to annual leave, which covers the BCEA minimum, when leave must be granted and when it may be paid out. Kenyan and Nigerian employers should read their own employment law and any agreement with the workers' union.
Staff applying for their own leave
Site workers whose login is linked to their payroll record can apply for leave themselves through self-service, and can download their own payslips. For a crew spread over several sites that saves the foreman a stack of paper forms. Those without a login, which is common for general workers, apply through their foreman, who captures the application.
Hospitals and clinics deal with the same rush of applications at a different time of year; leave self-service for healthcare staff shows how they run it.
Checking the pay runs on either side of the break
The December run and the first January run carry most of the risk. A short checklist:
- all shutdown leave approved before the December run is prepared;
- unpaid days entered as variable inputs on the run they fall in;
- workers who are working through the closure have their hours or allowances captured;
- the run prepared by one person and approved by another, as Achekam requires, and nobody approving a run that pays themselves;
- payslips sent: an employer setting sends them automatically when a run is approved, with a delivery log, if an e-mail service is configured.
If you still pay some site wages in cash, the closing run is the one to control most tightly; controlling cash wages on site covers the envelope routine. And if new workers start straight after the break, collect their details in December using details to collect from a new site worker.
Before the site office closes
Book a half-hour with whoever prepares payroll, go through the three groups worker by worker, and agree the date by which all shutdown leave must be approved. Everything else follows from that date.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
