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How Do I Enable Half-Day Holidays?

Last updated on February 13, 2026

How Do I Enable Half-Day Holidays?

Some holidays don't take the whole day — Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, an afternoon-off company perk. Mark them as half-day holidays and Vacation Tracker treats them as half of the workday everywhere: calendar, notifications, balance math.

How to Set a Half-Day Holiday

  1. Sign in at app.vacationtracker.io.
  2. In the left-hand menu, expand Leave Setup and click Locations.
  3. On the Location card, click Edit Holidays (or click into the Location and open the Holidays tab).
  4. Click Add a Holiday at the top right.
  5. Fill in the Name and Assign to Locations.
  6. In the Holiday type dropdown, pick Half-day holiday.
  7. Set the date (or recurrence rule, if Recurring is Yes).
  8. Click Save.
Add a Holiday form with
You can also convert an existing holiday
Already have a holiday set up as Single-day and want to change it to Half-day? Open the Holidays tab, click the edit (pencil) icon on that holiday's row, and switch the Holiday type to Half-day holiday. Works for both custom holidays and (within the allowed edit fields) imported ones.

How Half-Day Holidays Show Up

  • On the Calendar view, they render as striped blocks — the same visual pattern Vacation Tracker uses for half-day leaves. Easy to distinguish from full-day holidays at a glance.
  • They're included in notifications along with your other holidays and leave updates.
  • They're automatically applied to every user in the Location — employees don't have to claim them, the system treats the afternoon off as a given.
  • They reduce the workday by half. For balance math, a leave crossing a half-day holiday counts as a half-day of leave on that day.
Requesting leave around a half-day holiday
Users can still submit a leave request that covers the other half of that day — for example, taking the full day off on Christmas Eve even though the afternoon is already a half-day holiday. They just need to select the half-day option on the leave request so the balance math works out correctly.

Common Questions

Vacation Tracker treats half-day holidays as counting for half of the workday — it doesn't hard-specify AM or PM. In practice, most companies treat the afternoon off (e.g., early close on Christmas Eve). The accounting is what matters; the specific half is a company convention.

Half-day leaves require an 8-hour Length of Workday. If your Location uses a different workday length (set up under Edit Location General Settings on the Complete plan), half-day leave options are disabled — which means the Half-day holiday type is for Locations on the standard 8-hour workday.

Yes. When you set Recurring = Yes on the Add a Holiday form, the Half-day option in Holiday type still applies — the holiday repeats each year as a half-day observance (e.g., every Christmas Eve afternoon).

What's Next?

How Do I Set Holidays? How Do I Set Shorter Leave Durations? How Do I Edit a Location?
Need help?
Contact our Support team via email or chat, Monday to Friday, 9 AM – 5 PM EST.

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