Holiday owed

katerinasol

Hi all,

I'm not sure if it's the ambiguity of the English language of it's just too early in the morning, but I came across some payroll information about a person a few days ago that, amongst other things, said (made up figure) '2 days holiday owed'.

Now, like I say, I don't know if I'm losing it but does that mean that person has 2 days holiday that they haven't taken? Or that they owe the employer 2 days holiday?

TL;DR: "Holiday owed" = by the employer or the employee?

tizerbelle

katerinasol wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm not sure if it's the ambiguity of the English language of it's just too early in the morning, but I came across some payroll information about a person a few days ago that, amongst other things, said (made up figure) '2 days holiday owed'.

Now, like I say, I don't know if I'm losing it but does that mean that person has 2 days holiday that they haven't taken? Or that they owe the employer 2 days holiday?

TL;DR: "Holiday owed" = by the employer or the employee?

Could be either. Depends on the way the person writing it meant it.

The more important questions are:
why did you come across some payroll information?
If it's not part of your role, what are you doing with private data?
Are you "the person"?
If not, why do you care?
What are you actually trying to find out?

katerinasol

tizerbelle wrote: »

Could be either. Depends on the way the person writing it meant it.

The more important questions are:
why did you come across some payroll information?
If it's not part of your role, what are you doing with private data?
Are you "the person"?
If not, why do you care?
What are you actually trying to find out?

The more important question is the one that I'm asking. The reason that I'm not putting it into context is that I don't think strangers on the internet need to know specific details about what's part of my role and what isn't. I'll put your mind at ease though; I wasn't looking at anything I shouldn't have been.

I'll try to clarify if my first post didn't make much sense:

If you're viewing someone's payroll elements for a certain month and one of those says '2 days holiday owed', does that mean owed to the person (and therefore s/he is going to get 2 days' holiday paid as they hadn't taken it in time, or not, depending on the company policy) or owed to the company (and therefore s/he is going to get 2 days' pay deducted)?

heretolearn_2

Could be either, it's not like these things are set in law. You can enter any description you want on payroll systems.

Personally if we owed someone holiday I'd use 'holiday accrued' and that's pretty standard wording.

If someone had taken too much holiday I wouldn't bother specifying why, it would just go down as 'other absence' and a deduction made.

Still have no idea what your company means by 'holiday owed' and no-one else will be able to guess either. If you were looking at this legitimately as you say, ask the payroll department.

katerinasol

heretolearn wrote: »

Could be either, it's not like these things are set in law. You can enter any description you want on payroll systems.

Personally if we owed someone holiday I'd use 'holiday accrued' and that's pretty standard wording.

If someone had taken too much holiday I wouldn't bother specifying why, it would just go down as 'other absence' and a deduction made.

Still have no idea what your company means by 'holiday owed' and no-one else will be able to guess either. If you were looking at this legitimately as you say, ask the payroll department.

Thanks, so it does sound pretty ambiguous then! I will ask them, just thought I'd ask on here first in case I was being dense and it made perfect sense to everyone but me.

katerinasol

If anyone wanted to know what this was about, 'holiday owed' appears to mean holiday owed by the employee to the employer.

getmore4less

Clearly the procedures and process needs improving/documenting so everyone knows what things mean.

Acc72

katerinasol wrote: »

If anyone wanted to know what this was about, 'holiday owed' appears to mean holiday owed by the employee to the employer.

That is what it meant in this specific instance.

I assume that you received payroll data including an amount that you did not know whether to add or deduct ?

Any

To us that would mean that company owes employee... but then this would only be supplied it the employee was leaving and we had to pay it to him.

it would come in format:
Holiday accrued - less holiday taken = holiday owed.

It has never happened yet to me that employee would owe us though..

heretolearn_2

It happened to us last year. Someone booked holiday up to their limit, went abroad, and then had problems getting back again so returned to work 4 days late (not the volcano or any major problem). Deducted it as unpaid days but I suppose you could have said that they 'owed' us holiday.

katerinasol

Any wrote: »

To us that would mean that company owes employee... but then this would only be supplied it the employee was leaving and we had to pay it to him.

it would come in format:
Holiday accrued - less holiday taken = holiday owed.

It has never happened yet to me that employee would owe us though..

What 'heretolearn' said... it turns out that the person ended up taking too much holiday and therefore 'owed' the company some unpaid time off.

I'm not responsible for adding or deducting anything otherwise I would have known this by now I appreciate that some people are curious but why and where I was looking really doesn't matter, seems a bit weird to have vigilantes on here!