Add Company Holidays

How do I add company holidays?

Purpose: To teach you how to customize your company holiday listing.

Table of Contents

Need a little more help to become a company holiday expert? Check out our BambooHR Learning course!

Do you prefer hands-on learning? Our interactive guides will guide you through different aspects of your BambooHR experience. We have an interactive guide specifically designed to show you how to set up your company holidays. You can use the link below to access this guide. All you need to do is modify the "REPLACEME" with your BambooHR subdomain, and you can get started!

https://REPLACEME.bamboohr.com/home?pendo=oIGOhkm-TipN8l65oYF72Obai-k

Navigate to Holidays in Settings.

Add standard company holidays
Holidays

If you have not added any holidays yet, you will see the option to Add Standard Holidays.

Holidays

Select the applicable country and click Continue. Currently, the available standard holidays include holidays of the United States and Canada.

Holidays

If you need to make edits to a holiday, click on the holiday name.

If a holiday falls on a weekend, it will have a yellow highlight. If necessary, you can click on the holiday name to change the observance date.

Add a custom company holiday

If you would like to add any additional holidays beyond the standard ones, click + Add Holiday to add a custom holiday.

Enter the following details:

  1. Holiday Name
  2. Date: Enter the date. Click More than one day? if the holiday spans more than one day.
  3. This Holiday is for: If necessary, use the standard filters to filter the holiday. Once filtered, the holiday will only show in the Who's Out widget and calendar for the employees included in the filter.
  4. There are holiday hours or pay associated with this holiday: See below for more details on your options here.
  5. Save: Click to save your changes.

Holiday hours or pay

The following options will only show for customers with BambooHR's Time Tracking feature. If you do not have BambooHR Time Tracking and are interested in a demo, click here! Clicking this link will immediately send a request to our Expansion team.

If you check There are holiday hours or pay associated with this holiday, you will see the option to designate how many hours different employees (based on Employment Status) receive for that holiday. If a holiday is for All Employees and you don't cover everyone in your selection (for example, I may have left Interns out in the image above), everyone else will default to 0 hours.

*Please note if you have a time off policy set up based on hours worked and your employees do not work on holidays but receive regular pay, employees will receive time off accruals for the designated number of holiday hours within that employee group.

 

If you select the second option, Employees receive the following pay rate for any hours worked on this holiday, you can enter a rate that will apply to all hourly employees enrolled in Time Tracking.

*Please note if you have a time off policy set up based on hours worked and your employees work on a holiday and receive a special rate, employees will receive time off accruals for every hour worked on the holiday.

Note for BambooHR Payroll users: Anything above the normal base rate will not sync to payroll and will continue to pay at the normal rate. This will need to be adjusted manually when you run payroll. For example, if your rate is 1.5, to capture the missing .5 you will need to calculate the dollar amount associated with the .5 for each employee and then add it as additional pay in payroll.

Common holidays

As you enter a more common holiday, you may see a drop-down list with available holidays in our database. Select the applicable holiday to allow BambooHR to autofill the details.

Can I copy my holidays from last year?
Holidays

If you have set holidays for a previous year, the option to copy the full holiday list from year to year will be available.

Holidays
  1. Standard holidays will update with the new year's correct date and day of the week as applicable. Please note however, if you have updated the observance date for a standard holiday, that updated date will carry over to the new year. Click on the holiday name to make any necessary edits.
  2. Custom holidays will retain their exact dates in the new year. Click on the holiday name to make edits. Or, hover over the holiday and click on the trash can icon to delete it.

The filters selected for each holiday will remain from year to year when copied over.

BambooHR Payroll and Federal Holidays

For more information on how holiday hours will sync with payroll, click here! 

As a payroll professional, you’ll want to be aware of the following Federal Holidays. Depending on the timing of the federal holiday, the Federal Reserve, banks, and/or BambooHR Payroll can be closed, potentially affecting your payroll due dates. This will generally make your payroll run date earlier than normal due to ACH requirements (depending on your company settings).

BambooHR Payroll will send out reminders as a courtesy, however, we recommend marking these on your calendar and being aware of them to ensure your payrolls are not affected negatively:

  • New Year’s Day
  • Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Washington’s Birthday
  • Memorial Day
  • Juneteenth National Independence Day 
  • Independence Day
  • Labor Day
  • Columbus Day
  • Veterans Day
  • Thanksgiving Day
  • Christmas Day

Happy Processing!