Yearend pack reminder
By the time centres read this we will have crossed year end. In order to ensure we get our accounts done in a timely manner so our centres can use these for their Grant applications in the New Year please do your bit to help by ensuring your centres Xero is fully reconciled to the 31st of August 2019 and your centre has submitted the Finance Pack questionnaire on our website.
ASB Banking reminder
In the June Bulletin we included a flyer for the ASB administration account, this is available to all centres with their own charities number. It has lower fees and better interest rates on the transactional accounts.
Some centres have tried to approach their local ASB branch and been met with confusion. As this is a special arrangement we have through our National Business Manager Alan Ruscoe, please contact him directly on 027 562 3239 or [email protected] if you would like more information.
Centre on billing
I would like to say thank you for all the centres that took the time to discuss and come back to me on this question that we raised. It does seem I left of a vital piece of information being how we came to 11.2% – this was assumed any one employee would use about 40% of their full entitlement for public holidays, sick and bereavement leave, this would not be reimbursed if a staff member did not use this much leave, nor however would a centre be charged if an employee used more than 40%.
However, we have listened to the centres feedback and the majority would like the billing to stay as it is with 8% being applied for annual leave and centres paying ad hoc for Sick Leave, Bereavement and Public Holidays if and when they come up. So that is what we will do and billing from 1 September 2019 will not change.
I think the conversation was worth having, and would like to continue to ask centres for feedback if proposed changes come up that could have a direct impact, but are not legislative.
On this note it would be a good time to clarify one of the main issues that we have had and that is when a public holiday falls in the school holidays. Many of our centres question these bills as they say the employee should not be paid as this is not their regular day of work.
We have consulted with both our legal and external HR advisors on this issue numerous times and all advice has consistently warned us that we cannot contract out of public holidays by saying it is school holidays. An employee’s “regular day of work” is based on the preceding schedule and this must still be applied during a shutdown period.
A person who is a permanent employee is still employed over the School Holidays. They are just technically either on annual leave or leave without pay. Where a public holiday falls within school holidays the national Payroll and HR team will work with our external HR provider to determine the correct treatment and all centres will be on billed for payments based on the actual payments made to the employee.