Zoho People Leave Policies: Leave Types, Accrual and Holiday Calendars

How do leave types and entitlements work in Zoho People?

Each leave type is a separate policy. Zoho's help says a type can be paid, unpaid, on-duty or a restricted holiday, and counted in days or hours. You then choose an entitlement model: fixed, experience-based, grant-based for events such as maternity, or attendance-based, where leave builds from days or hours worked.

Applicability decides who gets the type. Zoho lets you target department, designation, location, role, employment type, custom fields or named employees, and add exceptions. With Organisation Structure on, you can also use legal entity, business unit and division. Eligibility can start a set period after the date of joining, so check joining dates before you import balances.

Name leave types so employees understand them without reading a policy, and prefix them by country when you have more than one, for example UK Annual Leave and India Earned Leave. That keeps reports readable and stops someone in Dubai seeing a type that only applies in Chennai.

How do accrual and proration work?

Accrual controls when leave is credited. Zoho's help lists yearly, monthly, weekly and instant accrual. Attendance-based types can credit leave per days or hours worked, by range or as a percentage of worked days.

Proration handles people who join or leave mid-cycle. Zoho lets you prorate at the start of the policy, at both start and end, or not at all, and round the result to the nearest, maximum or minimum value in steps of a day, half day or quarter day, or an hour, 30 minutes or 15 minutes. You can also set an opening balance for migrated staff, a maximum balance and minimum worked days.

Test proration with three real cases before go-live: someone who joined mid-month, someone on long unpaid leave and someone serving notice. Most balance complaints come from one of these.

How do reset, carry-forward and encashment work?

At the end of each cycle, Zoho People applies your reset, carry-forward and encashment preferences to unused leave. Zoho's help says that when reset is on, unused leave does not carry into the next cycle unless your carry-forward rule allows it. Encashment is available for experience-based policies.

You also decide what happens when someone exceeds their balance. Zoho lets you allow unlimited or capped balances, let the balance go negative, take it from future credits, or mark the excess as loss of pay. If you use Zoho Payroll in India or the GCC, that loss-of-pay figure is what flows to the pay run, so agree the rule with finance.

How do you set holiday calendars per location?

Add holidays under Leave operations, using Zoho's holiday gallery or manual entry, and assign each holiday to locations or to shifts. Zoho's help says you can apply a holiday to all users at selected locations, exclude staff on shift-based holidays, or apply it only to specific shifts.

Restricted holidays are optional days employees can choose; limit how many they take with a restricted holiday leave policy. Holidays can be full or half days, and you can import an ICS file. If you add a holiday after people have applied for leave, Zoho's Reprocess Leave Applications option recalculates those requests and balances.

For staff who work on a weekend or holiday, Zoho's compensatory off settings can credit time off automatically through a scheduler or by request, with expiry rules you set.

How should a multi-country team set this up?

Build one set of leave types and one holiday calendar per country, and apply them by location or legal entity. Do not try to stretch one global policy with exceptions; it becomes impossible to audit. The table shows a policy-level approach for four countries. The statutory notes are starting points only and rules change, so confirm with a local adviser.

Payroll links differ too. Zoho's help says the Zoho People to Zoho Payroll integration is currently available in India and GCC countries, so UK and US teams usually export leave reports to their payroll provider. Our Zoho Payroll UAE guide covers the UAE side.

Plan for transfers. When an employee moves from one country to another, change their location or entity on an agreed effective date, settle or carry the old balance under the old policy, and let the new policy start fresh. Write this down once so HR handles every transfer the same way. Also decide which calendar applies to remote staff who live in one country but report into another; the answer is usually the country of employment, but confirm it with your adviser.

How should you set leave approvals and restrictions?

Set approvals per leave type, with one level for routine leave and an extra level only where policy demands it. Zoho's approvals support up to ten levels, conditions based on fields such as leave count or balance, follow-up reminders, backup approvers and cancellation approvals.

Then add restrictions in the leave type itself:

1. 1Set a maximum number of consecutive days and require a document for longer sick leave.
2. 2Decide sandwich rules, which count weekends or holidays between leave days.
3. 3Use clubbing rules to stop certain types being taken together.
4. 4Control how far into the past or future people can apply.
5. 5Choose which days count as working days for leave, such as holidays or weekends.

Publish the rules alongside the configuration. When an employee's request is blocked by a sandwich or clubbing rule, they should be able to find the reason in your handbook in a minute, not raise a ticket. Review the rules each year when you load the new holiday calendar.

How can Flowpeak help with leave setup?

We turn your written leave policy into Zoho People configuration, migrate opening balances and test edge cases with your HR team before employees see their balances. Scope is fixed price in writing, paid by milestone, with 30 days of free fixes. See Zoho People implementation or start with the Zoho People and Payroll setup checklist.

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