Reconcile leave against payroll
every pay cycle.
Muster finds the days people were on leave but paid as ordinary hours. It checks each one against your leave system and shows the payroll impact before the pay run.
a month saved for Luxury Escapes.
How we catch unbooked leave.
Signal capture
Muster pulls signals from across your calendar, chat and email tools.
Muster weighs them
Works out who was on leave, day by day.
Leave system check
Each day is compared with approved leave.
You confirm
Missing leave is lodged before the pay run.
What Muster checks before every pay run.
Payroll only knows what was entered. Muster compares what actually happened with your leave system, person by person and day by day, and lists every gap.
Signals for every working day
Calendar out-of-office events, Slack and Teams status, email auto-replies and other signal sources are weighed to work out who was on leave each day.
Work trips are not holidays
An out-of-office for a work conference or client visit is not the same as one for a holiday. Muster tells them apart, so work travel is never flagged as leave.
Checked against approved leave
Each day is matched with your leave system, including split days and extended absences.
Payroll impact before the pay run
Every unbooked day comes with its effect on leave balances and liability, ready to fix before the pay run.
You confirm every flag
Nothing changes in your leave system until you confirm it.
A trail for finance and audit
Every flag and confirmation is kept, so finance can see how each balance was corrected.
| Employee | Day | Signals | Leave system | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priya N. | Mon 14 | No signals | No leave | Matched |
| Tom R. | Fri 18 | Calendar OOO: holiday, auto-reply | No leave | 1 day unrecorded |
| Priya N. | Wed 23 | Calendar OOO: sales conference | No leave | Work travel, not leave |
| Jess L. | Thu 24 | Slack away (AM) | No leave | 0.5 day unrecorded |
| Tom R. | Fri 25 | No signals | No leave | Matched |
Track the saving, pay cycle by pay cycle.
Every pay cycle adds to a running total, so finance can see the return in dollars, not just days.
- Lisa Goldberg14 · $6,860
- David Okafor12 · $7,420
- Tom Halliday11 · $4,950
- Priya Chen9 · $5,130
- Jonas Weber8 · $3,680
Example dashboard with sample data.
15% of leave was going unbooked. Muster closed the gap.
About $480,000 a year in leave liability and cash payouts that Luxury Escapes was never getting back.
Read the Luxury Escapes storyPayroll reconciliation questions.
Short answers for payroll, HR and finance teams in Australia.
Read the full leave reconciliation guideWhat is the difference between payroll reconciliation and leave reconciliation?
Payroll reconciliation checks that what was paid matches what should have been paid, including hours, rates, deductions and super. Leave reconciliation is the leave part of that check: confirming every day an employee was away is recorded as leave and deducted from their balance.
How often should leave be reconciled against payroll?
Every pay cycle, before the pay run. While the period is fresh, employees can still confirm what happened, and corrections land in the same pay run instead of being back-dated.
Can you reconcile leave without replacing your HR or payroll system?
Yes. Muster works alongside your existing systems. It reads signals like calendar out-of-office events, Slack and Teams status, and email auto-replies, weighs them before flagging a day, checks each day against your leave system, and flags every gap for you to confirm before the pay run. Managers and employees have nothing to fill in.
What did Luxury Escapes find?
Luxury Escapes found that around 15% of its leave was going unbooked: roughly $40,000 a month flowing into its leave liability and being paid out. Muster closed the gap, worth about $480,000 a year.
See your leave liability — and what it's costing you.
In 20 minutes, we'll show you the unrecorded leave hiding in your balances, the cash you're on the hook to pay out, and the monthly saving Muster delivers — using anonymised data from your own org.