Decide what happens to a salaried employee’s pay on the days they receive statutory sick, maternity, paternity, adoption, shared parental, bereavement or neonatal care pay — and top it up to a share of salary if your policy does.
A salaried employee on leave is paid statutory pay for the days they are away. Their salary would otherwise keep running for those same days, so without an adjustment they would be paid twice. The statutory leave settings decide what happens to the salary for those days, and whether your organisation pays more than the statutory minimum.
This is part of Salary, which is being turned on organisation by organisation. It affects employees whose pay comes from a salary on record. Employees paid only through line items or timesheets are unaffected.
You can also set one family-leave payment apart from the rest. For example, you might top up maternity pay but not paternity pay. That is called an exception.
The default. The salary for the days on leave is taken back with a separate line on the payslip, so the statutory payment replaces it rather than being paid on top.
Full pay
The days on leave are taken back and topped up to 100% of salary for the whole leave, statutory pay included. The employee is paid as if they were at work.
Both choices take the days back, so salary and statutory pay are never paid for the same day. If your contracts genuinely pay both, add a manual line.With Deduct days on leave you can add a top-up: contractual pay that brings the days on leave up to a share of salary. A top-up is made of tiers that run back to back from the first day of the leave. For example, 100% for 6 weeks, then 50% for 12 weeks. Statutory pay counts towards the percentage, so 100% means the employee is paid for those days as if they were at work. Days after the last tier get statutory pay only. The tiers must end within 52 weeks of the start of the leave.
Go to Settings → Employment. The Statutory leave card lists what happens to the salary for Sickness and Family leave, with any top-up. Click Edit (the pencil) on the card, choose what happens for each, add any top-up tiers, and click Save. To set one payment apart, click Add an exception for one type.
The Statutory leave card in Settings → Employment
Editing the card: family leave deducts the days on leave and tops them up to 100% for 6 weeks, then 50% for 12 weeks
2
For one employee
Open People, choose the person, and go to the Employment tab. The Statutory leave card shows what applies to them, marked Inherited when it comes from the organisation and Override when it is set for them. Click Edit, choose a different setting for a row, and click Save. Choosing Organisation default again removes their own setting. When their own family-leave setting covers a payment, that option reads Same as family leave.
The Statutory leave card on an employee's Employment tab, following the organisation's settings
For each statutory payment, the first setting that exists applies, in this order:
The employee’s exception for that payment
The employee’s setting for its family
The organisation’s exception for that payment
The organisation’s setting for its family
The default: deduct the days on leave, no top-up
Saving a change recalculates any open pay run the affected employees are on.
The days on leave come from the statutory payment itself, which records the dates it pays for. A day is taken back at the rate the salary line paid it:
A full pay period is paid as a share of the year: a twelfth for monthly, a fifty-second for weekly. Each day of it is worth that amount divided by the days in the period. The days are calendar days or working days, following the employee’s calculation method.
A part period (a joiner, a leaver, or a salary change part-way through) is already paid per day, so each day on leave is taken back at that line’s own daily rate.
Taking back every day of a period gives back exactly the salary for that period. Nothing is left over and nothing is taken twice.
Weekly, sick leave
Monthly, maternity leave with a top-up
£45,000 a year, paid weekly, on calendar days. The employee is off sick Monday 13 to Wednesday 15 April 2026 and is paid three days of SSP.
Line
Calculation
Amount
Salary
£45,000 ÷ 52
£865.38
Salary adjustment for sickness absence
3 days × (£865.38 ÷ 7 = £123.6257)
−£370.88
Statutory Sick Pay
3 qualifying days × £24.65
£73.95
Pay for the week
£568.45
The four days worked keep £494.50, which is exactly four sevenths of the week.
£36,000 a year, paid monthly, on calendar days. Maternity leave starts on 16 April 2026, so SMP pays 16 to 30 April. The organisation tops family leave up to 100% for the first 6 weeks.
Line
Calculation
Amount
Salary
£36,000 ÷ 12
£3,000.00
Salary adjustment for maternity leave
15 days × (£3,000.00 ÷ 30 = £100.00)
−£1,500.00
Statutory Maternity Pay
£1,335.17
Maternity pay top-up to 100% of salary
£1,500.00 − £1,335.17
£164.83
Pay for the month
£3,000.00
At 50% instead, the top-up would be half the salary for those days less the statutory pay. If statutory pay is already above that share, no top-up line is added.
A few cases worth knowing:
Sick pay counts qualifying days; the salary may not. SSP from Friday to Monday pays for two qualifying days, but a calendar-days salary paid all four days, so four days are taken back.
A salary change part-way through the leave gives two adjustment lines, one at each rate, because each salary line paid its days at its own rate.
Overlapping payments take each day back once.
Statutory pay after leaving has no adjustment. Statutory Maternity Pay can carry on after someone leaves. Once they have left there is no salary to take back, so the payment is paid on its own, with no adjustment and no top-up. If your contract keeps paying an enhancement after leaving, add it as a manual line.
Only the current pay period is adjusted. A payment entered late for an earlier, locked period changes the current period’s days only. The earlier period stays as it was paid, so correct it with a manual line if needed.
The adjustment and the top-up are separate lines next to the salary and the statutory payment. Each one names the leave, the dates and the days it covers, for example “Salary adjustment for maternity leave, 16 to 30 April 2026 (15 of 30 calendar days)”. The quantity × rate on the adjustment always equals its amount.Like salary lines and statutory payments, they are worked out rather than typed, so they cannot be edited on the payslip. They follow the statutory payment: edit or delete the payment and the lines change with it at the next recalculation.
byType takes the six family-leave payments by name: StatutoryMaternityPay, StatutoryPaternityPay, StatutoryAdoptionPay, StatutorySharedParentalPay, StatutoryParentalBereavementPay and StatutoryNeoNatalCarePay. Sick pay has no byType entry because sickness already covers it on its own. PUT replaces the whole document, so send every part you want to keep.Each tier’s length is a duration with a unit. Week is the only unit today, and more may be added, such as months. Treat a unit you don’t recognise as unsupported rather than as an error, and send it back unchanged.Every response includes effective, which gives the setting each of the seven payments resolves to and its source: Employee, Organisation or Default. You never need to work out the order above yourself. See the Salary API overview.
