If any staff actually work on a public holiday they are entitled to be paid at time and a half, plus get an alternative holiday (day in Lieu).
Staff who do not work on a public holiday get paid at their relevant daily rate for their day off.
Important:
If an employee only worked 1 hour on the public holiday, they still get a whole day in lieu. The alternative holiday can be taken at any time mutually agreeable to the employer and employee and is paid at the employee's relevant daily pay for the day taken off.
Lets see what this looks like in MYOB Payroll. Imagine that an employee worked a normal 40 hour week but one of the days was a public holiday and on the public holiday they were asked to work half a day.
This means 32 ordinary hours will be accounted for (4 days at 8 hours per day).
They only worked for 4 hours on the public holiday and this is paid to them as time and a half for working on this day.
If we look at this another way the employee has worked the following hours in the last week:
32 hours ordinary time
4 hours on the public holiday
36 Total hours worked
They are also given a day in lieu of 8 hours (Alternative Holidays), as no matter how long they actually worked for on the public holiday they are entitled to a full day in lieu.
MYOB requires the alternative day to be entered in as a negative value to essentially ‘offset’ the public holiday code used to show that the employee has earned the right to take this as a paid day off at a later time. If the alternative day is not entered as a negative value then essentially you will pay your employee the following:
8 hours alternative day
32 hours ordinary time
4 Hours time and a half
8 hours public holiday
52 Total hours paid for the week (you can see this would be an overpayment
of 16 hours if the pay was entered in this way).
So you can now see how you must use the paycodes in MYOB to account for the public holiday earned so that the employee can take this at a later date and so that the employer does not overpay the employee by the days owed to them.