There are two ways to manage holidays in Connecteam, depending on your company's policy. If employees receive the holiday as a day off, use the Time Off feature to grant them paid or unpaid holiday leave. If employees work during the holiday and are entitled to a higher pay rate, use the Overtime feature in the Time Clock so their holiday pay is calculated correctly.
Let's explore each option!
How to Set Local Holidays as Time Off
Holiday policies allow you to automatically grant employees paid or unpaid time off when local or religious holidays occur. Follow the steps below to create one.
Part 1: Create the Policy Type
From the Time Off feature, navigate to the Paid or Unpaid section (depending on your needs).
Click + Add type.
Select Holiday and click Add policy type.
Click Create first policy.
💡 Tip: Holiday policy types automatically repeat every year, so you only need to configure them once.
Part 2: Configure the Policy
Set up your Holiday policy settings.
Name your policy, for example US Holidays Full Time.
Next, decide whether to hide this policy from users, so they won't have access to it when requesting time off. If you don't enable this option, users won't see this policy in their time off view, but holiday entries created under this policy will still appear in their timesheets.
Decide whether time off will be presented in hours or days, and select the applicable work days for this policy.
4. Click Next step to configure the relevant holidays select the relevant countries from the list.
Connecteam automatically maintains the dates for internationally recognized holidays, so you won't need to update them every year.
Add a Custom Holiday
If your company observes a holiday that isn't included in one of the available calendars:
Click + Add custom.
Enter the holiday name.
Select the holiday date.
Click Save.
Custom holidays automatically repeat every year using the same date.
Part 3: Configure the Holiday Pay
Once you've selected your holidays, decide how much paid time employees should receive for each one.
For every holiday, choose whether employees receive:
Full day
First half day
Second half day
This allows you to accurately reflect your company's holiday policy without creating multiple holiday entries.
Please note: Half-day holidays configured in a Holiday policy are fully paid by the company. If employees should receive half a day paid by the company and use their own Time Off balance for the remaining half-day, you'll need to use two separate policies:
A Holiday policy for the company-paid portion.
A standard Time Off policy for the portion deducted from the employee's balance.
Part 4: Configure Limitations and Assignment
Continue configuring the remaining policy settings, such as assigning the policy to employees and configuring any limitations.
In the Limitations tab, you can define a Waiting period to determine when employees become eligible for the holidays included in the policy. For example, you may require employees to complete three months of employment before receiving paid holidays.
Next, assign the policy to the relevant employees. As my policy is only applicable for full time employees in the US, I'll assign it only to my full time employees.
Once you've completed the setup, click Save. After the Holiday policy is assigned to an employee, Connecteam automatically creates holiday entries for every enabled holiday included in the policy.
The holidays are automatically added to the:
Employee's time off balance log
Their timesheets
Schedule
This means admins no longer need to manually add recurring holiday entries each year, and holiday pay is automatically included when preparing payroll.
How to Set Local Holidays as Overtime
With our Holiday Overtime feature, you can easily create a customized list of holidays. You can pay your employees overtime at their regular rate or set a special rate that applies only to those selected dates. You can even set the holidays to repeat annually!
Go into the Users page from the left sidebar
Click on Company policies and enter the Overtime & Pay rules tab.
Switch to Manage pay rules and click on Add rule.
Add a new Holiday rule. To learn about setting up Overtime & Pay Rules, make sure to refer to this article!
Add all the details for your new holiday rule...
Its name, start and end date, start and end hours if you wish
Choose the multiplier or additional pay
Choose if you wish for the rule to be repeated automatically every year on those same dates
Click on Save and then on Save Changes again to finalize the edits made
Please note: Keep in mind that, in the multiplier section, you can either choose to multiply the base wage by the "x" amount or add it to the base wage "x" amount.
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