When you migrate to Wagepoint 2.0, statutory holiday pay calculations may work differently than you expect. After migration, the Federal method won’t calculate statutory holiday pay for the first 4 weeks because historical pay period data isn’t transferred.
How are statutory holiday pay calculations different in 2.0?
In Wagepoint 1.0, all automatic statutory holiday pay calculations use the Federal method. If you were using automatic statutory holiday calculations before migrating, you were using the Federal method.
Wagepoint 2.0 has more options for calculating statutory holiday pay. In 2.0, you can either calculate statutory holiday pay manually or choose from two automatic calculation methods:
Daily wage method - NEW!
This method calculates statutory holiday pay for hourly employees using their hourly rate and assigned holiday hours. Statutory holidays are pre-loaded based on the employee’s work location, and you can edit the assigned hours for each holiday.
Federal calculation method
This method is commonly used for federally regulated workplaces and calculates stat holiday pay as 1/20th of wages earned in the four weeks before the holiday.
Manual calculation
Statutory holidays are tracked and calculated outside of Wagepoint. You can still add statutory holiday pay to payroll manually using an income code.
For more specific details regarding how these calculations work, visit this article: How statutory pay calculations work.
How does migration impact my statutory holiday pay calculations?
The migration process moves most year-to-date information, but it does not migrate any historical pay period data. Since the Federal method uses historical pay period data as part of the calculation method, it will not be available for the first four weeks after migrating to 2.0. This is expected behaviour and not an error. After four weeks, enough historical data will be available in the system and you can switch to the Federal method if you would like.
If you are a migrating customer using Wagepoint to automatically calculate statutory holiday pay for your employees, you’ll need to choose how to handle statutory holiday pay during this period:
Option 1: Use the Daily Wage method (Easiest)
- After migrating, you can set up the Daily wage method immediately in 2.0 because it requires no historical pay period data
- Newly available in 2.0, this method may be a better fit for your business and also allows you to edit the number of hours for holidays
- After four weeks, you can continue using the daily wage method or switch back to the federal method
Option 2: Time the migration strategically
- Select your migration date to align with a period when there are no statutory holidays in your region during the next four weeks
- Be sure to plan based on your pay period dates (rather than pay dates)
- Ensure that your pre-migration checklist is complete with plenty of time to avoid delays
Option 3: Manually calculate for first 4 weeks
- Manually calculate statutory holiday pay and pay out using an income code for the first 4 weeks after migration
- After your first four weeks in Wagepoint 2.0, you can switch to the Federal method and statutory holiday pay will be calculated automatically based on prior earnings