Payroll over the Christmas holiday period

PaySauce has reduced support hours over the holiday period, but we’ll be back to our normal hours from the 12 January 2026. If you need help with anything, our online Help Centre is available 24/7.

Our working hours through the holidays are:

Christmas week:

• Monday 22 December: 8am to 5.30pm (normal hours)
• Tuesday 23 December: 8am to 5.30pm (normal hours)
• Wednesday 24 December: 8am to 3pm
• Closed 25-26 December

New Year week:

• Monday 29 December: 8am to 3pm
• Tuesday 30 December: 8am to 3pm
• Wednesday 31 December: 8am to 3pm
• Closed 1-2 January

Back to work week:

• Monday 5 January to Friday 9 January: 8.30am to 5pm

Payment processing times depend on your payment options.  For full details on all payment options, check out this page here.

If you're using Push, Akahu or the ASB API, now is the perfect time to consider moving to a direct banking option with ASB, ANZ, BNZ or Westpac, as non direct payment options will treat the public holidays as non banking days.

The direct banking payment option allows you to process payroll payments 365 days a year!

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You sure can! Go through the pay period set up for each pay run as normal, and process for the date you want it to come out. Then move on to the next pay run.

Please note: If you wish to pay staff in advance, due to IRD filing periods not yet being open, you can process December pays (i.e., pays with a payment date in December) from 24th November onwards, and January pays (i.e., pays with a payment date in January) from 15th December onwards.

Important: If you're using Akahu or the ASB API as your payment method, the funds are deducted at the time of processing (i.e., when you close the pay) and released to staff on the payment date you set.

We've got you sorted! You can either follow the steps in the article here, or if you want a bit more detail, follow along with the tour above.

Adding one-off payments to pay runs is super simple – check out this helpful video or step by step article here.

Managing annual leave during the holidays is key, so here are two guides to help you:

1. Checking entitlements: Find out where to check your employees' leave balances here: Annual leave entitlements and payments
2. Recording leave: Learn how to apply that leave correctly within your pay run here: Recording leave

To help you correctly record a leave cash-up for your employee, please follow the steps in these guides:

1. Managing annual leave cash-ups correctly: Annual leave cash ups
2. Recording leave: Learn how to apply that leave correctly within your pay run here: Recording leave

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When an employee is leaving, check the entitled leave balance they have and count forward from their final day of work for as many days of entitled leave as they have available. If a public holiday falls in that period, the employee is entitled to be paid for it and it must be added to their final pay (as a public holiday taken). If the employee only has 'accrued' annual leave in their balance, you don't need to do this.

1. Public holidays they entitled to: read more about this rule on the Employment NZ website: Final pay
2. Terminating an employee: follow instructions here: Terminate an employee

You only pay them if there was an expectation they would have been at work, so generally speaking, you don't pay them for the public holiday.

Exception: If your employee was on unpaid leave for a short holiday and they didn't have enough annual leave to cover the time, then you'd still pay them for the public holiday. Feel free to contact our support team if you want to discuss any specific situations.

They are paid for the public holiday taken rather than using their sick leave balance.

We know this can be tricky! There's no specific rule that can determine this for you (such as referring to a specific number of weeks). You need to use the information you have about your employee's normal working patterns.

Examples:

• If they didn't work for the last five Mondays but their roster recently changed to include Monday again, it might still be an otherwise working day for them.
• If they worked the last four Mondays to cover for someone but they weren't going to carry on working Mondays when they got back, it might not be an otherwise working day for them.

What to do: Have a look at the information you have to hand, as well as any reasonable expectations of both you and the employee, and try to come to an answer. This will usually be pretty straightforward (working every other Monday, for example, or only the last Monday of the month) but occasionally you're going to have to make your best informed assessment. The best thing you can do is let your employee know a) ahead of time, and b) how you came to the conclusion you did.

More info: MBIE has some good information about public holidays here: Otherwise working days

Yes, if they would have usually been working on that day. There's no minimum period of time (we often hear people talking about working that day for four weeks or establishing a pattern). Even if it's a new working day for them, if you know they would have been working on that day if it were not a public holiday, they should be paid for it.

If a business has what's called a "customary closedown", where the business ceases operations at a specific time of year, things can look a bit different. You can require employees to take their annual leave (you must give them 14 days notice).

New employees without entitled leave: If an employee has been working for you for less than 12 months and they don't have entitled leave, you would pay 8% of their gross earnings and then shift their entitlement date to your closedown/company anniversary date. We know this can be tricky, but we've got you sorted – feel free to contact our wonderful support team if you need help with this.

More info: MBIE also has great information on this in their Annual Closedowns page and Closedowns Guidance flowchart.

In the first instance, you should refer to your employment agreement to see what was stated in there, if anything. If there's nothing in there, you should look at policies, and then what's been done before.

There's no rule that says you must pay before a public holiday, but you should discuss it with your employees in good faith and let them know what to expect. Ideally you would do what has always been done before. Most employers pay prior to the public holiday and most employees would expect to be paid before the holiday too.

An alternative public holiday is a banked day off that the employee can take at another time. An alternative date to receive their day off for the public holiday. It's often called a day in lieu, but try to get the proper name stuck in your head to make it easy when it comes to entering stuff in payroll.

Who gets one? Employees get one if they work on a public holiday, and it's a day they would have usually been at work.

Who doesn't? Employees don't receive an alternative public holiday if they're called in to cover a public holiday on a day they don't usually work (but they still get time and a half for the hours worked).

Using it later: An alternative public holiday gets added to an employee's balance and they can then take it at another time. If they haven't used it after 12 months, they can request to cash it up/take it as paid without having the day off. It can't be cashed in until it's been 12 months since they earned it.

Employees get paid 1.5x their rate for the day. That includes whatever they earn – so if they earn a pick rate, milking rate, on-call rate, or whatever else it is, they get 1.5x what they earned.

They are also entitled to an alternative public holiday if it's a day they would have usually worked.

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Any employee who would have usually been working on that day needs to be paid.

That even includes casuals if it's determined that they would have been working on that day.