Set Up a Salary Sacrifice Pay Item for Holiday Buy and Sell Schemes in Bob and UK Payroll

Use this guide to manage holiday buy and sell schemes by combining employee request workflows in Bob with salary sacrifice deductions in UK Payroll.

Holiday buy and sell schemes typically involve two parts:

Employees requesting to buy or sell annual leave through Bob

Payroll processing the associated salary sacrifice deductions through UK Payroll

Because Bob doesn't currently offer a fully automated holiday buy and sell feature, you can create a streamlined self-service process using custom fields and People Data Update Flows, then manage the salary sacrifice deductions through UK Payroll.

Manage Holiday Buy and Sell Requests in Bob

Create a simple workflow that allows employees to submit requests, managers to approve them, and HR or Payroll to track and process them.

Create custom fields to track requests

1. Go to Settings > People's data fields.

2. Create a new custom category, for example, Holiday buy/sell requests.

3. Add any fields you want to track, such as:

4. Date of request

5. Days to buy/sell

6. Status

7. Pending

8. Approved

9. Processed

Create a People Data Update Flow

1. Go to Flows > People Data Update Flows.

2. Create a new flow that allows employees to submit holiday buy or sell requests.

3. Add approval steps, such as:

4. Direct manager

5. HR

6. Payroll

7. Configure notifications as needed.

Configure permissions

Give the appropriate users access to the request data:

1. Grant eligible employees view access to the custom category.

2. Grant managers, HR, or Payroll edit access so they can review and update requests.

3. If needed, create a custom employee permission group to control visibility.

4. Process approved requests

Once a request has been approved:

Manually adjust the employee's time off balance to add or remove days.

Update the request status to Approved or Processed for audit and tracking purposes.

This approach gives employees a self-service experience while allowing HR and Payroll teams to maintain control over entitlement changes and payroll processing.

You can also review ideas and experiences shared by other customers in the Heartcore HR community discussion about holiday buy and sell schemes. https://heartcorehr.hibob.com/time-73/buying-and-selling-leave-2320?tid=2320&fid=73

Set Up the Salary Sacrifice Deduction for UK Payroll

After a holiday purchase has been approved, create a Deduction Pay Item in Bob.

Here's a link to a handy Help Centre article, which explains the full process:

https://help.hibob.com/hc/en-us/articles/30665566499217-Enter-deductions-and-entitlements-in-Bob#h_01JC3K5WT6EJPDP8SW5P1FQNZH

The newly created Deduction Pay Item will need a few more payroll-centric details added for tax purposes.

Once the Deduction has been created, head over to UK Payroll. From Bob Products click Payroll > UK Payroll.

On the Overview page, click Manage Pay Items and select the Pay Item. In here, the tax treatment can be entered ready for payroll processing.

What Happens Next?

Once the recurring pay item is active:

Employees continue to request holiday purchases or sales through Bob.

Managers and HR approve requests through the configured workflow.

Time off balances are adjusted manually in Bob.

Salary sacrifice deductions are automatically processed through UK Payroll according to the recurring pay item schedule.