Public holidays and non-working days

Types of holiday and non-working day

CheckBiz360 classifies non-working days into different categories that determine their scope within the configuration hierarchy:

National public holiday

A national public holiday is a date declared non-working by state legislation that applies to the whole organisation. It is configured at organisation level and inherited automatically by all branches and employees.

Regional public holiday

A regional public holiday applies only to the branches located in the corresponding region. It is configured at branch level so that it affects only the employees of that site.

Local public holiday

Similar to the regional one, a local holiday applies to a specific municipality or area. It is managed at branch level, so that only that branch's employees are affected by the clocking block.

Bridge day

A bridge day is a working day that the company, by internal decision, turns into a non-working day to give continuity to an official holiday. It is configured as an internal non-working day with a description identifying it.

Internal non-working day

This category covers any date the company decides to block for its own reasons: closures for stocktaking, refurbishment, mandatory training with no regular workday, and so on.

Employee absences

A specific person's holidays, leave and days off are recorded as absences in their calendar. They are added from the employee's record or from the availability board, and can also be consulted in the Employee non-working days tab in Schedules.

• Date range. An absence can cover several consecutive days. In the lists it appears as a single row with its start, its end and the number of days (for example, "1 – 15 Sep · 15 days"), which expands to view or remove individual days.
• Paid. Each employee absence carries a Paid box with three possible values: *paid*, *unpaid* or *not set*. *Not set* means it is not recorded —for example, in absences recorded before the box existed— and is displayed differently from *unpaid* so as not to confuse missing data with a "no". Organisation or branch public holidays do not carry this mark.

A day of absence blocks that person's clock-in just like a public holiday.

People can also request their vacation or leave from the app, in My calendar. When you approve it in Contact → Requests, the days become absences, with the paid mark chosen by whoever approves. See Vacation and leave from the app.

The name of the day off is what the person sees

From version 1.10.0 of the app, when today is not a working day for a person, the Attendance screen explains it. The schedule box says Non-working day and, below the day's figures, a highlighted label gives the reason: the name that day off has in the calendar.

• Vacation or leave approved from the app shows its type, for example "Vacation", "Personal leave", "Medical" or "Leave".
• A public holiday or an absence added in the panel shows the name you gave it.
• If several fall on that day, the person's own wins over their branch's, and the branch's over the company's.
• If the day off has no name, no label is shown: only Non-working day.

That is why it pays to give every public holiday and every absence a clear name that the person understands without asking: "San Isidro local holiday" or "Closed for stocktaking" rather than "Holiday 2" or an abbreviation.

How CheckBiz360 blocks clock-ins on non-working days

When an employee tries to record their entry or exit on a date marked as non-working in their effective calendar, the system returns the error code checklog/day_disabled and rejects the clock-in.

This block operates before any other validation. The system does not check the location or the active shift if the day is marked as non-working: the rejection is immediate.

Clock-in attempts on non-working days are recorded in the history with their timestamp, the device used and the error code, which lets the manager detect whether an employee is trying to clock in on a day that does not apply to them.

What happens if the company works on public holidays

There are sectors in which working on public holidays is the norm: retail, hospitality, transport and emergency services operate normally on days that are non-working for other companies.

A configured public holiday applies to all the employees within its scope: there is no way to cancel it for just one branch or just one person. Not even a custom schedule with a shift that day gets round it; the clock-in is rejected with checklog/day_disabled. That is why the way to work on a public holiday is not to mark as a holiday what does not close.

The whole branch works that day

• If the holiday is at the branch, delete it from its days off. The date stops being blocked for that branch's employees.
• If the holiday is at the organisation, it affects every branch. Remove it from the organisation and add it as a local holiday only at the branches that do close.

Only part of the workforce works that day

If only some of them work (for example, customer service staff but not administration):

1. Do not mark the day as a holiday at the branch: treat it as a working day.
2. Record an absence that day for those who have the day off, from their record or from the availability board.
3. Those who work clock in normally; those with the absence are blocked.

Sector considerations

Retail

Retail usually operates during bridge days, local holidays and even some national holidays. It is common to configure the branch with a calendar free of holidays and manage one-off closures (for example, Christmas or New Year) by manually adding the days the store stays closed.

Hospitality and catering

Hospitality works virtually without interruption throughout the year, including the most significant holidays. In this sector it is advisable to leave the branch calendar clear of holidays and add only the days of actual closure of the establishment.

Healthcare and emergency services

In these sectors, working on public holidays is part of the collective agreement. CheckBiz360 allows working time to be recorded on holidays without blocks and, if the company needs to identify the holidays worked in order to calculate salary supplements, it can use the working-time reports filtered by day type.

Seasonal activities

Companies with seasonal activity (tourism, agriculture, events) may have periods in which they operate normally during holidays and others in which they stay closed. The recommended configuration in these cases is to define the holiday calendar at organisation level with the national holidays and manage each season's particularities through the branch calendar or through internal non-working days.

Managing public holidays in advance

Configuring the holiday calendar at the start of each calendar year, or sufficiently far ahead of each holiday, is recommended. CheckBiz360 does not automatically apply the country's official holidays: the manager has to enter them manually or import them if the platform offers that feature under their subscription plan.