Leave management for CA, legal and consulting firms

Name the closed weeks in advance

Every firm knows its hardest weeks: the run-up to the return and tax audit deadlines for a tax practice, April and May for an audit practice, and the days before a filing deadline for a corporate law team. Publish these weeks at the start of the year as closed for planned leave. ZeniaHR has no blackout-date setting, so the rule lives in the leave policy and in the partner's judgement, helped by a notice period on earned leave and a team leave calendar that shows who is already away.

Study leave for article assistants

Article assistants take study leave before their exams, and the leave they may take during articleship is limited by their institute's rules. Track it carefully, because leave beyond the limit can extend the articleship. Take an article with 10.5 days of earned leave who asks for 24 days before the exams. Earned leave covers 10.5 days and the remaining 13.5 days go as leave without pay. Both appear in the leave ledger with dates, so the principal can check the running total against the institute's limit at any time.

Court vacations and the quiet months

Litigation teams have a natural leave window in the summer and winter vacations of the courts, when only vacation benches sit. Encourage associates and clerks to take long leave then, keeping one person available for urgent vacation bench matters. Tax teams have theirs once the autumn deadlines pass, and audit teams in the months after statutory audits close. Leave taken in these windows costs the firm least and gives people a real break.

Comp-off for deadline Sundays

Filing weeks eat Sundays. When staff work on a weekly off or a holiday, credit comp-off and set an expiry that lets them use it after the season, for example within 90 days. Comp-off that lapses in the middle of the next deadline is no reward at all. Partners should approve comp-off requests as readily as they asked for the Sunday, or the next request for weekend work will meet a quieter response.

How to set it up in ZeniaHR

1. Start with the default CL, EL, SL and LWP types and set rules for each, such as notice for EL and whether each type is allowed during probation.
2. Keep article assistants under a trainee employment type, and check their leave ledger totals against the institute's limit every quarter.
3. Grant comp-off for weekly offs and holidays worked during deadlines, with an expiry long enough to use once the season ends.
4. Move your existing leave register into ZeniaHR with Data Import, which matches your Excel columns and checks each row before loading opening balances.
5. Publish the closed weeks on the Company Wall at the start of the year, and ask partners to check the team leave calendar before approving.

Read more about leave management in ZeniaHR.

Roles this applies to

Frequently asked questions