Define Holidays

1. Generate holidays for the new year

1.1. Automatically Generate Holidays
1.2. Switching from Manual to Automatic Generation
1.3. Manually Generate Holidays

2. Adding individual holidays

3. Configuring and managing holiday calendars

4. Hourly Holiday

5. Assign holiday calendar to employees

In timr you can configure various holiday calendars and country-specific or region-specific holidays for each calendar year. A public holiday calendar can be assigned to one or more employees. The holidays are automatically taken into account in the hours and vacation balance of the time account as continued pay.

1. Generate holidays for the new year

1.1. Automatically Generate Public Holidays

With our update from mid-October 2025, new calendars are now created with automatic holiday generation enabled by default.
This means that public holidays are generated two years in advance. On January 1st, timr will automatically generate the holidays for the year after next.

In addition, manual changes to the calendar are no longer possible, which prevents accidental edits.

1.2. Switching from Manual to Automatic Generation

If you created your holiday calendars before mid-October 2025 and you want to switch to automatic generation, please proceed as follows:

Go to Administration/Holidays and click Edit holiday calendar for your existing calendars. Here, you can enable automatic generation.
Once this option is active, you can still define individual holidays, such as Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.

After saving, holidays will always be generated automatically two years in advance.
Example: Holidays for 2027 are already included, and holidays for 2028 will be automatically added on January 1st, 2026.

Important information:

• Existing calendars are not automatically converted. You need to enable the automatic generation manually for each calendar.

• Automatically generated holidays cannot be edited or added manually, ensuring that no accidental changes occur.

• If you want to make manual changes, you can deactivate the automatic mode at any time.

• If your calendar currently includes manually created holidays, these will be overwritten when switching to automatic generation. timr will show a confirmation message before saving so that you can approve the change.

• When you create new calendars, automatic generation is enabled by default.

1.3. Manually Generate Holidays

If your calendar includes custom holidays, you need to generate the holidays for the upcoming year manually.
To do so, go to Administration/Holidays and click Generate holidays.

Note: You do not need to create a new calendar for the new year.
The holidays will be generated in the existing calendar, and the holidays for the upcoming year will automatically be considered in employees’ time accounts.

2. Adding individual holidays

If you have additional holidays, e.g., region-specific holidays, you can add them manually at any time.

Note: This is only possible with manual holiday calendars! If automatic generation is enabled, you must first disable it under “Edit holiday calendar.”

To add a custom holiday, click on “Add Holiday", insert the "Date" and a short "Description" and press "Save".

3. Configuring and managing holiday calendars

In order to add a holiday calendar go to “Administration/Holidays” and click on "Add Holiday Calendar". You can create different calendars which is useful if you have employees in different countries, for example. 

As a first step you create a holiday calendar via “Add Holiday Calendar”. You can set up as many calendars as you need.

For each calendar you now define holidays (see 1)

Using “Edit Holiday Calendar” you can change the name and the base of a calendar any time. Here you can also activate or deactivate the automatic generation.

If you don’t need a calendar you have already created you have the option “Delete”. This is only possible if this holiday calender isn't assigned to any user.

4. Hourly Holiday

In case some holidays in your company only start at a certain time (for example on December 24th or 31st), we recommend that you do not create these public holidays in the calendar.

Instead, create a separate working time type, e.g. "Hourly holiday", with the category "Paid absence".

On the day in question, the employees then enter their working time as normal. Those hours that count as a "public holiday" are posted with the working time type "Hourly holiday".

Detailed instructions on how to create working time types can be found in our documentation on configuring working time types.

5. Assign holiday calendar to employees

During initialization, the corresponding holiday calendar will be assigned to the employee. Instructions on how to set up the employee time account can be found here.
However, you can always change the assigned holiday calendar for certain users. This process is described in the article on editing users under point 2.2.