Holidays

Open Settings => Holidays
(the page is available if your role has the Settings => Holidays permission)

Create a new holiday

Click Add New Holiday.


Name it.
Choose Rule Type.

There are 7 of them:

  • Single Day — one fixed date.
    Example — Christmas — 25th December.
  • Range — several days in a row.
    Example — New Year — 1-2 January.
  • Nth Weekday of Month — choose Occurrence + Weekday + Month.
    Example — Thanksgiving — Fourth Thursday of November.
    Example — Presidents' Day — Third Monday of February.
  • Last Weekday of Month — choose Weekday + Month.
    Example — Memorial Day — Last Monday of May.
    Example — Summer Bank Holiday (UK) — Last Monday of August.
  • Weekday After a Date — choose Weekday + Relative To Date + Day + Month.
    Relative To Date has two options: After this date and On or after this date (use the second one if the holiday may fall on the anchor date itself).
    Example — first Thursday after 18 April.
  • Weekday After Nth Weekday — choose Target Weekday + Occurrence + Anchor Weekday + Month.
    Example — Election Day (USA) — Tuesday after the first Monday of November.
  • Easter-based — choose Easter Calendar (Western/Gregorian or Orthodox/Julian) + Feast.
    The Feast list already contains the usual ones: Carnival Monday, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Whit Monday, Corpus Christi.
    Example — Good Friday — Easter-based, Western, Good Friday (-2).

Specify the day / days according to the chosen rule type.

If falls on weekend

For every rule type except Range you can choose what to do when the holiday lands on Saturday or Sunday:

  • No shift — the day off stays on the weekend (nothing changes for the employees).
  • Nearest weekday — Sat → Fri, Sun → Mon.
  • Next working day — Sat/Sun → Mon.
  • Previous working day — Sat/Sun → Fri.

Example: Independence Day — 4th July — Next working day. In 2026 the 4th of July is Saturday, so the system will treat Monday, 6th July as the day off.

Apply to:

  • all employees - will be applied to whole company.
  • office - will be applied to some offices.
  • department - will be applied to certain department only.

You can select several offices or several departments at once — no need to create a separate holiday for each of them.
If the office or the department does not exist yet, create it right in the dialog — use the Add New Office / Add New Department link under the field.

Example:
You have an international team - one office in USA, one office in Ukraine.
Labor day in USA - in September.
Labor day in Ukraine - in May.
So you need to create 2 different holidays - one for USA office and second one - for UA office.

NOTE: an employee gets office/department holidays according to the Office and Department set in their Job tab. If they are empty, the employee will only get the holidays applied to all employees.

Add comment if it is needed.

Choose Repeat Each Year for such holidays as New Year so you don't need to create it again.

NOTE: Repeat Each Year is shown only for Single Day and Range. All the calculated rules (Nth Weekday, Last Weekday, Weekday After a Date, Weekday After Nth Weekday, Easter-based) are annual by default — the system recalculates the exact date for every year on its own, so you create such a holiday only once.

Time off calculation

NOTE: holidays will not be included to time-off calculation.
Example:
Employee requests PTO from 24 to 26 December.
But 25th December - Christmas.
So employee's time off hours will be
24 December - 8 hours
25 December - 0 hours
26 December - 8 hours.

Holiday dates are also greyed out in the calendar of the Add/Edit Time Off form, so they can't be selected as the first or the last day of the request.

The list of holidays will be shown in holidays grid:

Use Refine Holidays to filter the list by holiday name, date range or Applied To.
The grid shows: the holiday name with the date for the current year under it, Applied To (offices / departments), Comment, Repeat, and the Edit / Remove actions.
For calculated rules the grid shows the date computed for the current year, with the weekend shift already applied.

Advanced Settings

On the same page, in the Advanced Settings block, fill in Send Upcoming Occasions Email To — a comma-separated list of email addresses.
At the end of each month brainyHR will send those recipients a summary of the next month's occasions: company holidays, birthdays and work anniversaries.

Where else the holidays are shown

  • Calendar — every holiday is shown on its day, for the employees it applies to.
  • Employee profile => Quick stats => Upcoming Occasions — holidays for the next 2 weeks, together with birthdays and anniversaries.
  • Slack — if you fill in Webhook URL for Holiday Messages and the time in Settings => Portal Settings => Slack, brainyHR will post a message on working days about the holidays of today, tomorrow, in 2 days and in a week.
  • Reports => Company Reports => Holiday List — the whole list of holidays with filters by Office Location and Date Range, and the Export button (CSV with Date, Holiday, Office, Department). The report is available if your role has the Reports => Holiday List permission.