How US holidays affect pay dates and our turnaround times

Applies to: staffing Partners and their account teams planning work around US public holidays. If you want to know whether a worker is owed extra for working a holiday, that is a different question — see Holiday and premium pay.

Summary: On a US bank holiday no payments are processed, and anything that would have paid that day moves to the next business day. Our US team is out as well, so the reviews you depend on to get someone working — Authorized Representative requests, assignment approvals and background-check reviews — also pause. Build a day or two of slack into anything you need live around a holiday.

Payments do not process on a bank holiday

Payroll and payments run on business days only. A payment whose check date falls on a US bank holiday is processed and paid on the next business day instead. Likewise, time you approve on a holiday is not picked up that day — it goes into the next business day's run.

This is the same rule that applies to weekends, and the mechanics are unchanged: approval is still the gate, and after approval the receiving bank decides when the money actually appears. See Your worker's hours are approved — when do they get paid, and can a payment be expedited? for the full sequence, and How long does direct deposit take to reach my bank? for the bank leg.

One case runs the other way: where a bank holiday falls on a Friday, weekly pay is issued the Thursday before rather than the following Monday. The worker-facing detail is in When do I receive my paycheck?.

If an assignment is on daily pay, the same business-day rule applies — see How daily pay works (US W-2 employees).

Our review turnaround on federal holidays

A holiday is not only a payments event. Our US team is out of office, so anything that needs a person to look at it takes longer. The reviews most likely to sit are:

• Authorized Representative requests for Form I-9

• Assignment approvals

• Background-check reviews

This matters because the published targets for these are business-day targets. Assignment approval usually takes about 24 hours (see How long does it take for an assignment to be approved?), but a holiday sitting in the middle of that window stretches it. The same is true of screening turnaround — see How long do background checks and drug tests take?.

What to do about it

• Get approvals in on the last business day before the holiday, ahead of that day's processing cutoff, if you want the worker paid on the normal schedule.

• Submit new assignments earlier than usual. If you need someone starting the day after a holiday, submit ahead of the holiday, not the morning of.

• Chase Authorized Representative and screening steps before the break rather than during it. A candidate who completes their part on the holiday still waits for a reviewer.

• Tell the worker. Most "where is my pay" tickets around a holiday are timing, not a fault, and one sentence from you prevents them.

We email you before each holiday

Ahead of each US holiday we send partners a notice with the specific dates affected — the check date that moves, the day payments resume, and which reviews will be delayed. That notice is the authority for that particular holiday, because the dates differ every year and some holidays are bank holidays without being ours. This article is the general rule; the notice has the calendar.

Note that a US holiday does not necessarily affect workers employed outside the US, whose payroll and public holidays follow their own country's calendar. Canadian statutory holidays are a separate calendar again — see Vacation pay and statutory holidays in Canada.

Who to contact

If a payment you expected has not moved by the end of the first business day after a holiday, or an assignment approval is holding up a start date, email support@ascen.com with the worker's name and the assignment. Timesheet entry, scheduling and placement questions go to the worker's staffing Partner as usual.