> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.hr-easy.nlead.ch/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Public and school holidays

> Canton-specific public holidays, school holiday calendars, and how they affect time and absence.

## Public holidays are cantonal

Switzerland has exactly **one** federal public holiday — 1 August. Everything else is
set by the canton, and cantons genuinely differ: a day that is a holiday in Luzern is
an ordinary working day in Zürich.

The platform therefore treats public holidays as **configurable per installation and
per canton**, never as a hard-coded list. An employee's holidays follow the canton of
their Standort.

### What a public holiday does

* It is not a working day, so it does not consume vacation entitlement.
* It reduces the Soll hours for that day.
* It is excluded from working-day calculations — including the five-working-day SECO
  embargo in [job distribution](/guides/recruitment/job-distribution).

### Moving holidays

Easter-relative holidays — Good Friday, Easter Monday, Ascension, Whit Monday, Corpus
Christi — are **computed** for the year rather than maintained by hand, so the calendar
does not need re-entering every December.

### Managing the calendar

Under **Settings → Public holidays**, per canton and year:

* Add or remove a day.
* Mark a half-day (some cantons treat 24 or 31 December this way).
* Add local holidays — patron saints' days, Sechseläuten, cantonal fair days.

## School holidays

School installations need a second calendar: the term and holiday structure of the
schools themselves. It drives when staff are expected on site, when leave can
realistically be taken, and how annualised working time is distributed across the
year.

School holiday periods are maintained per location and year, and are visible in the
absence calendar next to public holidays so a leave request is assessed against the
right context.

<Note>
  School holidays are not automatically absence. Teaching staff are typically still employed and
  often still working; the calendar informs planning rather than creating entries.
</Note>

When staff themselves are off site — and different groups return at different times —
that is a **school opening** per [staff group](/guides/time-absence/staff-groups), not
a school holiday: educators can be back a week before assistants and mentors.

## Municipality data

Swiss municipality reference data (the BFS Gemeindeliste) is kept current by a
scheduled job. It backs address validation on employee records and the municipality
codes required on payroll declarations — a wrong municipality code is a rejected
declaration.

## Where holidays show up

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Time tracking" icon="clock" href="/guides/time-absence/time-tracking">
    Soll hours drop to zero, so a holiday does not read as an under-worked day.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Leave" icon="umbrella-beach" href="/guides/time-absence/leave-and-absence">
    A vacation request spanning a holiday consumes one day less of entitlement.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Payroll" icon="franc-sign" href="/guides/payroll/monthly-run">
    Hourly-paid employees are treated per the cantonal and contractual rules.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Recruitment" icon="calendar" href="/guides/recruitment/job-distribution">
    The SECO embargo counts working days, excluding weekends and national holidays.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>