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How holiday hours and shortened days work

How Begin handles national holiday hours, holiday multipliers, and pre-holiday shortened days.

Written by Merilin Peetris
Updated today

Begin automatically calculates special pay for hours worked on national holidays and can shorten the working day before holidays. This article explains how these settings work.

Holiday hour multipliers

Go to Settings → Overtime calculation to configure holiday multipliers:

  • National holiday hours multiplier — applied to all hours worked on a national holiday (default: 1.0, meaning double pay — base + 100% extra)

  • Holiday night multiplier — applied to night hours worked on a holiday (default: 1.0)

  • Holiday evening multiplier — applied to evening hours worked on a holiday (default: 0)

How holiday multipliers combine

When an employee works during a holiday night, both the holiday and night multipliers can apply. The report shows these in separate columns:

  • Holiday hours — general holiday multiplier

  • Holiday night hours — additional multiplier for night hours on holidays

  • Holiday evening hours — additional multiplier for evening hours on holidays

Pre-holiday shortened days

The setting "Previous working day before a national holiday shortened by" lets you configure automatic shortening. For example, setting it to 3 hours means that the working day before every national holiday is 3 hours shorter than normal.

The options range from 0 to 12 hours. This affects the norm hours calculation for that day.

Shifts spanning midnight on holidays

The setting "Working time calculation method when shift crosses month boundary" also applies to holiday boundaries. You can choose to:

  • Assign all hours to the start date's month

  • Assign all hours to the end date's month

  • Split hours between months based on midnight

Managing national holidays

National holidays are configured separately and determine which dates receive the holiday multiplier. Check with your admin that the correct holidays are set for your country.

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