Working patterns

Part-time holiday, worked out for you

Record how each person actually works — full-time, part-time, flexible or a rotating shift — and HollyHR pro-rates their holiday allowance automatically. Part-timers get the right balance without a spreadsheet.

How do you calculate part-time holiday entitlement?

In HollyHR you set your organisation's full-time week — say 37.5 hours — then record each person's contracted hours. HollyHR works out their full-time equivalent and automatically pro-rates their holiday allowance: someone on 80% of full-time hours gets 80% of the leave. Part-timers see the right balance without a spreadsheet or manual maths.

Working patterns capture the shape of someone's week — which days they work and for how long — and pin it to an organisation-wide full-time standard. From there, their full-time-equivalent figure feeds the time-off balance so annual leave is pro-rated the moment the pattern is set, and manual corrections still sit on top as an auditable adjustment when you need them.

Part-time allowances are right the first time

Set your full-time week once, record a person's contracted hours, and HollyHR pro-rates their leave allowance by full-time equivalent automatically. A 25-day policy at 80% hours becomes 20 days on their balance, with no manual sums to get wrong at year end.

Model the working week people actually have

Not everyone works nine-to-five, five days a week. Build patterns for fixed weekly hours, flexible arrangements or zero-hours workers, set start and end times, unpaid breaks and hours per day, and reuse them across your team. Give one pattern a default so new starters inherit it.

Handle rotating shifts, not just steady weeks

For people on a rota that repeats over more than one week, set a multi-week cycle of up to twelve weeks. HollyHR averages the hours across the cycle to work out the weekly figure, so alternating or fortnightly patterns still produce an accurate full-time equivalent.

Keep an honest, auditable record

Contracted hours and the resulting FTE live on each person's employment record, and the pro-rated allowance flows through to their time-off balance and your payroll export. Manual pro-rata adjustments stay visible as separate ledger entries, so you can always see how a balance was reached.

What you get today

  • Set an organisation-wide full-time standard (for example 37.5 hours a week)
  • Record each person's contracted weekly hours and see their full-time equivalent calculated automatically
  • Pro-rate annual leave allowance by FTE automatically — no manual holiday maths for part-timers
  • Build reusable working-pattern templates: fixed weekly, flexible, or zero hours
  • Set start and end times, unpaid breaks and working hours per day
  • Model rotating shifts with multi-week cycles of up to twelve weeks
  • Mark a default pattern so new starters inherit it
  • Archive patterns you no longer use (once no one is assigned to them)
  • Keep manual pro-rata leave adjustments as separate, auditable ledger entries
  • Include full-time-equivalent figures in your payroll export

On the roadmap coming soon

  • Effective-dated pattern historyTrack when a person's hours change over time, so past leave years use the pattern that applied then.
  • Working patterns over the public APIExpose per-day hours, weekly hours and FTE history through the REST API and webhooks for payroll and integration partners.
  • Built-in report viewsAlongside today's CSV export and API, built-in views for headcount, FTE and leave are on the roadmap.
  • Rota & time and attendanceShift scheduling and time tracking arrive as the first Plus workforce module.

Questions people ask

How is part-time holiday entitlement calculated in HollyHR?

HollyHR pro-rates it by full-time equivalent. You set the organisation's full-time week and each person's contracted hours; HollyHR then works out their FTE and applies it to the leave policy allowance. Someone working 80% of full-time hours on a 25-day policy sees 20 days on their balance, calculated automatically.

Do I have to work out pro rata annual leave myself?

No. Once a person's contracted hours are recorded, HollyHR pro-rates their annual leave allowance automatically and shows the correct balance on their time-off dashboard. There's no separate calculator to run and no spreadsheet to maintain, so part-time allowances are right from the start of the leave year.

Can HollyHR handle flexible and zero-hours workers?

Yes. Working patterns support fixed weekly hours, flexible arrangements and zero-hours workers, with start and end times, unpaid breaks and hours per day. You build a pattern once and reuse it, and you can set a default so new starters inherit the most common arrangement.

What about staff on a rota that changes each week?

You can model a working pattern that repeats over more than one week — up to a twelve-week cycle. HollyHR averages the hours across the cycle to produce the weekly figure and the full-time equivalent, so alternating or fortnightly shift patterns give an accurate leave allowance.

What is a full-time equivalent (FTE) and why does it matter?

Full-time equivalent expresses someone's hours as a proportion of a full-time week — 30 hours against a 37.5-hour standard is 0.8 FTE, or 80%. In HollyHR that figure drives pro-rated holiday, so part-time leave is fair and consistent across the team, and it flows through to your payroll export.

Can I still adjust someone's leave allowance by hand?

Yes. Manual pro-rata and correction adjustments are recorded as separate ledger entries that sit on top of the FTE-pro-rated base allowance. That keeps the automatic calculation clean while giving you an auditable trail of any change you make by hand.

What happens to leave if I don't set a working pattern?

People without contracted-hours data keep the full policy allowance, exactly as before — nothing is pro-rated until you record their working pattern. That means you can adopt working patterns gradually, starting with your part-timers, without disrupting anyone on standard full-time hours.

Free for your first 10 people

The whole core product, no card, no trial clock — and everything exports if you ever want to leave.

Related: Time off & leave · Who's away · People records