Carrying annual leave over into the next leave year

What the rules allow, roughly

In the United Kingdom and across the EU the broad shape is the same: the statutory minimum is meant to be taken, not banked, and anything an employer gives above it is a matter for the contract.

The United Kingdom is the clearest illustration. The Working Time Regulations 1998 split the 5.6-week minimum into four weeks under regulation 13 and a further 1.6 weeks under regulation 13A. The 1.6 weeks may be carried into the next leave year by agreement; the four weeks generally may not. Anything an employer gives above 5.6 weeks is entirely contractual, and the contract decides.

Across the EU, the Working Time Directive's four weeks is the floor and the same instinct applies: it exists to be taken. In both the United Kingdom and the European Union, where somebody was prevented from taking leave — long-term sickness is the usual case — the position is different, and that is one to take properly rather than to read about on a page like this one.

That is what the United Kingdom and European Union rules named above say. It is not advice about your situation.

The three policies small companies actually use

Use it or lose it. The balance resets to the allowance on the first day of the new leave year. Simplest to administer, and it quietly encourages everybody to book three weeks in December.

A capped carry-over. Up to a fixed number of days moves across, often with an expiry — five days, say, to be used by the end of March. This is the most common policy at this size, and the one that produces the most spreadsheet errors, because it needs both a number and a deadline.

Carry-over by agreement. Nothing automatic; people ask, and the answer is case by case. Fair, and completely unmanageable unless the answers are written down somewhere everybody can see.

All three come down to the same thing on the first morning of the new year: a number per person.

Rolling the year over

This is deliberately one number and one field, because every attempt to make carry-over cleverer has made it harder to check.

Before you roll over, export the leave CSV for the year that is ending — that is your record of what was taken, and it is worth keeping whatever you do next.

Then move the leave year start date to the new year, and put each person's carried-over days into the carry-over column. Their total for the year becomes their allowance plus that number, and the chart is empty again, with the new year's public holidays filled in.

If your policy has an expiry date, that is a note to yourself, not a field: there is no policy engine here. That is a deliberate limit. A policy engine that encodes five days expiring at the end of March unless a manager signs them off is the beginning of the HR suite, and it is how a tool that cost one price for the company starts costing one per head.

What to tell people in December

The useful thing is not the policy, it is the number. People book December badly because they find out late.

A shared chart changes the timing rather than the policy: everybody can see their own balance from October onwards, and can see how much of December is already taken by somebody else. The conversation moves from telling somebody in the week before Christmas that they are about to lose days, to people quietly booking them in half term.

If you want it in writing, export the team CSV — it carries each person's allowance, carry-over, days taken, days waiting and days left, which is most of a year-end leave summary already.