Holidays: Indian gazetted holiday list

Holidays block specific dates from counting against attendance. On a holiday, employees are not marked absent if they don’t check in, and the day shows up on the shared leave calendar for everyone in the company. AttendFirst ships with a pre-loaded Indian gazetted holiday list - about 20 dates per year covering Republic Day, Independence Day, Gandhi Jayanti, Diwali, Holi, and Eid - so you can seed a full year of holidays with a single Load Template click.

Adding a holiday

Open Admin → Settings → Holidays and click Add Holiday. Fields:

• Date: the calendar date
• Name: shown on the calendar (for example, “Republic Day”)
• Optional: turn on if this is a floating or optional holiday employees can choose to take

Save, and the date appears on the org-wide leave calendar immediately.

Bulk-importing Indian holidays

AttendFirst maintains a per-year list of Indian gazetted holidays: about 20 dates including Republic Day, Independence Day, Gandhi Jayanti, and the major festivals. Floating dates like Diwali, Holi, and Eid are updated annually.

To import:

1. Click Load Template in the top right.
2. Pick a year
3. Review the list and uncheck any your company doesn’t observe
4. Click Import

Dates that already exist in your holiday list are skipped, so running the import twice is safe.

Optional holidays

Mark a holiday Optional to let employees choose whether to take it off. On optional holidays:

• Employees can still check in and work normally. Status will be Present as usual.
• Employees can also request the day as leave, which routes to their manager for approval.
• The calendar shows the date with a dashed border to signal it is optional.

Common optional holidays in India: Ambedkar Jayanti, regional festivals like Pongal outside Tamil Nadu, Good Friday.

What employees see

The Holidays link in the top nav opens a read-only year view for every employee. Admins publish; employees read.

How holidays affect attendance

On a holiday:

• No check-in required. Employees are not marked Absent.
• If an employee does check in (optional holiday, or company decides to work that day), their attendance is recorded normally with status Present.
• The day shows on the Attendance status reference as Holiday.

Holidays apply to every employee in the company. There is no per-department holiday override. If your Hyderabad office observes Ugadi but your Bangalore office doesn’t, add it as an optional holiday so the Hyderabad team can apply for leave.

Editing and deleting

Edit a holiday by clicking the row. Delete with the three-dot menu. Deleting a past holiday does not retroactively change past attendance status. Records stay as they were.

Frequently asked questions

Why do the Diwali and Holi dates change every year?

Because they follow the lunar calendar. AttendFirst updates the floating-holiday dates in the template files each December for the next calendar year. Use Import template annually to refresh.

Can I have different holidays per location?

Not directly. Work around it by marking the location-specific ones as Optional and letting employees at that location apply for leave on those days.

Do holidays count against leave balance?

No. Holidays are company-wide non-working days and don’t subtract from anyone’s leave quota. Only approved leave requests do.

What if a holiday falls on a weekend?

AttendFirst does not auto-shift the holiday to Monday. If you want a compensatory off, add a separate holiday entry on the Monday with a name like “Republic Day observed”.

Related docs

• Working hours and shifts. Which days are working days to begin with.
• Leave requests. How optional holidays convert to leave applications.
• Attendance status reference. All status codes including Holiday.