Non-Paid Vacation Time - Help Required

David Congreave

Question from one of our readers in Florida:

Ian Congreave · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:59 pm Post subject: Non-paid Vacation Time

Your question is the same question that bugs many employers in the UK. There is no single right way of doing this in the UK and I suspect that things are no different in the US. I don't think federal laws have anything to say on the matter and it seems to me that Florida has the fewest state labor laws of any state.

The question you are asking is, how do you decide from an employee's salary what the value of a day's pay is? Once you know that, you can work out how much to deduct from the semi-monthly pay.

One way would be to divide the semi-monthly pay by the number of working days in the half month. The problem with that approach is that the answer will be different in each half month.

Another way would be to divide the annual salary by the number of working days in the year - e.g. salary divided by 260 - that is probably the most common approach in the UK.

Another question is whether you already have a method in place for calculating the value of untaken holiday when an employee leaves. If so, you could use that method.

Whatever method you decide on, it should be clearly set out in the contract that you have with your employees - then there can be no confusion or arguments.
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Ian Congreave, PayPerShop owner

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