Public holidays

Deckchair keeps a per-organization list of public holidays. The list is used to shade holidays on the wallchart and — optionally — to exclude them from leave-day counting. Review it under Settings → Holidays.

Automatic sync by country

The holiday list is automatic and read-only. It’s driven entirely by your organization’s country code.

When an admin sets the country code (in Settings → Organization), Deckchair populates the holiday list for that country. Over 100 countries are supported. For multi-region countries with variable regional holidays — UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain — an optional county/state code adds regional holidays on top of the national list.

Admins can’t add, edit, or delete individual holidays from the UI — everything comes from the country/region sync. If your organization needs a different list, change the country code; the list re-syncs to the new country.

Browsing by year

The Settings → Holidays page shows one year at a time. Use the previous/next arrows to navigate. Recurring national holidays appear on every year’s list automatically.

How holidays interact with leave

The per-member setting Public holidays off controls what happens when a public holiday falls inside a leave request:

• On (default) — public holidays are not counted as leave days. A request for a week that contains a public holiday is one day shorter than it would otherwise be.
• Off — public holidays count like any other working day. The member takes leave over them and the day is deducted.

Use the “off” setting for members who regularly work public holidays (hospitality, retail, healthcare, on-call rotations).

Hierarchy of effects

A day might be a weekend, a non-working day from the member’s schedule, a public holiday, or all three. Deckchair evaluates in this order:

1. Is this day in the member’s work schedule? If no, not counted. Stop.
2. Is this day a public holiday and does the member have “public holidays off” enabled? If yes, not counted. Stop.
3. Otherwise, counted toward the leave request.

A public holiday falling on a Saturday, for a Monday–Friday worker, is excluded by rule 1 — it was never going to count anyway.

Changing country later

If your organization relocates or expands, change the country code under Settings → Organization. The holidays list re-syncs to the new country.

Handling one-off closures (e.g., Christmas week)

Because you can’t add custom holidays, one-off company closures — office shutdown between Christmas and New Year, a founders’ day, a local civic day not in the sync — need to be handled differently. The closest tools today:

• Locked dates — mark the range so it doesn’t deduct from balances when members book over it, the same way public holidays behave for members with “public holidays off” enabled. Members still submit a leave request over the closure, but only the non-locked days count. See locked dates.
• Ask members not to book — the lowest-friction option if you trust the team and the dates are communicated clearly.

Custom holidays that behave exactly like synced holidays — no leave booking required at all — are planned but not yet available. Locked dates are the closest workaround today.

Multi-country organizations

Deckchair doesn’t currently support per-member holiday lists — the entire organization shares one country’s sync. If you operate across multiple countries:

• Set the country to the majority country and have minority-country members set public holidays off = off, then book leave over their local holidays individually.
• Or run separate Deckchair organizations per country if the split is significant.