The holiday or Christmas allowance is not calculated

Symptom

In Payroll › Process › Process the month, when you press Calculate on a batch with allowances, the Invalid Operation window opens and the batch does not move on. The message names the employee, and the other payslips of the batch wait.

Message

The first three messages were triggered with Calculate, with the Payroll Processor profile, on a batch of type Christmas for October 2026 (8 payslips), in Draft. The example line is added on the payslip, in Add a line.

Twelfth without a written agreement. The payslip has a Twelfth of the Christmas allowance or Twelfth of the holiday allowance line, and the employee has no agreement:

““Ana Margarida Pinto” has no written agreement to be paid in twelfths on 31/10/2026. What happened: paying an allowance in twelfths needs the employee's written agreement (Labour Code art. 264.º/3), with the document attached. How to fix it: record the agreement on the employee form (menu Action › Written payment agreements), or remove the twelfth line from the payslip.”

Holiday allowance without a base. The Holiday allowance line gives days, but no payslip line enters the base:

“The holiday allowance of “Ana Margarida Pinto” has no base. What happened: no line of the payslip enters the base of the allowance (none has “Enters holiday allowance” = Yes) and no base was given. How to fix it: put on the payslip the base remuneration and the payments for the specific way of working, marked for the allowance, or fill in the line's base.”

Legal parameter missing for the reference year. The Holiday allowance line has quantity 0 and, in the optional column Holidays of the year, a very old year (in the example, 2000). With quantity 1 and no base, the “has no base” message comes first:

“The payroll parameter “HOLIDAY_MINIMUM_DAYS” has no version in force on 01/01/2000. What happened: the calculation needs a valid legal value on that day and none was found, so nothing was assumed. How to fix it: ask whoever maintains the national legal data (group “National legal data”) to load the version for that period in Payroll › Configure › Law and calendars › Legal parameters, and calculate again.”

Pending validation on screen: the following message came from the server, in a separate call, and was not repeated by clicking.

“The reference year 2030 of the allowance on Ana Margarida Pinto's payslip is not valid. What happened: an allowance belongs to a year between 2000 and the payslip year (2026); a future year has no IRS table to withhold.”

Holiday indemnity. The button to pay it only appears on holidays with Changed by the company ticked and Indemnity for the change filled in. Without that there is no button and no message. Pending validation on screen: read from the screen definition; the demo has no holidays in these conditions.

Pending validation on screen: “has no base” for the Christmas allowance and “holidays not approved”. In the demo, the Christmas allowance always found the remuneration (Ana Margarida Pinto: €2,400.00), and a 5-day holiday request was refused for having fewer than 10 consecutive days, before reaching the payslip. So the texts are not quoted here.

Verified causes

Cause	How to recognise it
The twelfths agreement is missing	The message names the employee and the date; there is no agreement in Payroll › Prepare › Written payment agreements
The holiday allowance finds no base	The payslip only has the allowance line, no line enters the base and the line's base is empty
The reference year is outside what the software knows	The message mentions the parameter and a date in that year, or a future year
The indemnity has no amount	There is no button to pay it: the holidays are not marked as Changed by the company, or Indemnity for the change is zero

What to check

1. The batch Type and the period.
2. On the named employee's payslip: the lines, the quantity, the base and the Holidays of the year column of the allowance line.
3. In Payroll › Prepare › Written payment agreements: whether there is an agreement in force on the payslip date.
4. In Absences: the employee's holidays and the state of the request.

How to fix it

1. Twelfth. Record the agreement in Payroll › Prepare › Written payment agreements, with the document attached. If the employee did not agree to twelfths, remove the line from the payslip.
2. No base. Fill in the base of the allowance line, or put the base remuneration on the payslip, marked for the allowance.
3. Reference year. Correct Holidays of the year or clear the field: the payslip year then applies. If the year is right and the parameter is missing, ask whoever maintains the national legal data for it.
4. Indemnity. On the holidays, tick Changed by the company and fill in Indemnity for the change, if the company changed or interrupted holidays already booked. Pending validation by a certified accountant: when the indemnity of art. 243.º is due.
5. Press Calculate again.

Current limit

In the demo, with no events in the month, the payslip of the Christmas batch only carried the Christmas allowance line. Pending validation on screen: the allowance payslip of a month with bonuses, benefits in kind or advance payments, and the correction of an absence after an allowance payslip has been validated.

Expected result

• Calculate finishes without a window and the batch moves to Calculated. To touch the lines again, Reset to draft asks for a reason. In the example, Ana Margarida Pinto's payslip has a Christmas allowance of €2,400.00.
• For the full process, follow How to pay the holiday and Christmas allowances. If the block is of another kind, follow I cannot process the month's payroll.

When to contact support

• The same message continues after correcting what it asks.
• The message mentions a parameter for a recent year: the software should have it.
• The calculated amount does not match the employee's remuneration and length of service.

Information to send

• The batch name, the type and the period.
• The named employee and the payslip lines.
• The full text of the message, copied from the screen.
• The profile you logged in with.