Leave Entitlement in Singapore: A Leave Management Guide for SMEs

If you employ staff in Singapore, you are tracking more leave types than you probably realise. Annual leave, outpatient sick leave, hospitalisation leave, childcare leave, extended childcare leave, maternity, paternity, shared parental, adoption and unpaid infant care leave each have their own eligibility rules, and several of them changed in 2025 and 2026.

The short version: most statutory leave kicks in after 3 months of continuous service. Annual leave starts at 7 days and grows to 14. Sick leave is up to 14 outpatient days inside a 60-day hospitalisation ceiling. Parental leave for Singapore citizen children is largely government-paid, but you pay the employee first and claim it back.

This guide sets out each entitlement as the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) states it, with a link to the MOM page, then gets into the operational side most guides skip: half-days, MCs, blackout periods, days-in-lieu, carry-forward, approvals and records.

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Statutory minimum vs company policy

Statutory leave is the floor set by the Employment Act and the government-paid schemes; you cannot contract out of it. Company policy is everything you add on top: extra days, half-day leave, extra carry-forward, blackout periods, approval rules. Most disputes start when the two share one spreadsheet column. Track them separately and you can always say whether something is a legal entitlement or a perk you chose to give.

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Annual leave

Want the numbers for a specific employee? Our free leave entitlement calculator works out annual, sick and childcare leave from a start date, including first-year pro-rating and part-time hours.

MOM says employees covered by the Employment Act who have worked for at least 3 months are entitled to paid annual leave (MOM: annual leave eligibility and entitlement).

For someone who has worked between 3 and 12 months, leave is pro-rated on completed months: completed months divided by 12, multiplied by the annual entitlement. MOM rounds fractions below 0.5 down and 0.5 and above up.

Carry-forward and forfeiture. For employees covered under Part 4 of the Employment Act, MOM says the employer must allow unused annual leave to be carried forward to the next 12 months; after that it can be forfeited. For employees outside Part 4, the contract decides whether unused leave is encashed, carried forward or forfeited. MOM also lists situations where annual leave can be forfeited, such as being absent without permission or reasonable excuse for more than 20% of working days, or being dismissed for misconduct (MOM: annual leave in special situations).

If you are not sure who falls under Part 4, our staff rostering guide explains the salary thresholds and links MOM's coverage pages.

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Sick leave and hospitalisation leave

Employees covered by the Employment Act who have worked for at least 3 months get paid outpatient sick leave and paid hospitalisation leave, provided they inform the employer within 48 hours of the absence (MOM: sick leave eligibility and entitlement).

Two details catch owners out:

• ▸The 60 days include the 14. If someone has used all 14 outpatient days, MOM says only 46 days of hospitalisation leave remain for that year. Your tracker needs to link the two balances, not keep them as separate buckets.
• ▸Hospitalisation leave needs the right certification. MOM says it must be certified by a medical practitioner who can admit patients into hospital, not just any clinic.

MC rules you should build into your process

• ▸Teleconsultation MCs count. MOM states employers must recognise MCs from a medical practitioner registered under the Medical Registration Act or Dental Registration Act, including teleconsultation MCs (MOM FAQ).
• ▸Sick days on rest days, public holidays and non-working days are not counted as paid sick leave used (MOM: sick leave in special situations). If your system deducts 3 days for a 3-day MC that spans a Sunday rest day, it is over-deducting.
• ▸A half working day counts as a full day. MOM says sick leave taken on a half working day, such as a Saturday, is one day's sick leave.
• ▸Sick during annual leave is not automatic conversion. MOM says the employee may discuss with the employer whether the annual leave can be cancelled and replaced with sick leave. Decide your stance once, write it down, and apply it consistently.

Practically: staff message their supervisor on the day and upload a photo of the MC on return. A photo attached to the leave record beats a paper MC in a drawer.

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Childcare leave, today and what is coming

As of September 2026, MOM and the Made for Families site describe the scheme like this (MOM: childcare leave; Made for Families: childcare leave):

The 2026 change. At the 2026 National Day Rally, the Government announced that childcare leave and extended childcare leave will be merged into a single, larger childcare leave scheme for parents of children aged 12 and below, and that the Government will cover the cost of all child-related leave (maternity, adoption, paternity, shared parental and childcare leave) for all child orders, up to the reimbursement limit (Made for Families: NDR 2026). At the time of writing, the start date and detailed entitlements are still to be announced. Do not hard-code today's 6-and-2 split so deep into your process that you cannot change it.

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Maternity, paternity, shared parental and other family leave

These are the entitlements where the employer pays the employee and then claims reimbursement from the Government, which means your records have to be clean enough to support a claim.

For GPML, MOM says the employer pays the first 8 weeks and the Government reimburses the last 8 for the first and second child, and the Government reimburses all 16 weeks from the third child, within caps. The NDR 2026 announcement above would change the employer share, so watch for the start date.

Timing matters for planning. From 1 April 2025, MOM says paternity leave and shared parental leave need 4 weeks' notice unless the employer accepts less. Without mutual agreement, paternity leave is taken as one continuous block within 16 weeks of the birth, and shared parental leave as one continuous block within 26 weeks. By agreement, both can be spread flexibly across the first 12 months. For a five-person team, agreeing a flexible pattern early is usually far easier than absorbing a surprise four-week gap.

The claims themselves go through the Government-Paid Leave portal.

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The operational side: what actually goes wrong

The entitlements are the easy part. Here is where SME leave records usually fall apart.

Half-days

MOM says leave taken on a half working day is treated as a full day's leave, though the employer may choose to treat it as half a day. Half-day leave on a normal working day is not a statutory concept at all; it is a policy you can offer. If you allow half-days, define AM and PM clearly (a 9am to 1pm half for office staff looks nothing like half of a 12-hour shift), and make sure balances can hold 0.5.

Blackout periods

Many businesses cannot let people go on leave in certain weeks: an F&B outlet in the fortnight before Chinese New Year, a retailer during GSS or 11.11, an accounting firm near filing deadlines. Blackout dates are a legitimate company policy for annual leave, but publish them early, apply them consistently, and remember what they cannot touch. An MC is an MC, and paternity or shared parental leave has its own default timing rules. A blackout that quietly blocks those is a problem waiting to happen.

Public holidays and days-in-lieu

MOM's position (public holidays entitlement and pay):

• ▸If a public holiday falls on a rest day, the next working day is a paid public holiday.
• ▸If it falls on a non-working day, such as Saturday for a five-day week, the employee gets another day off or a day's salary in lieu.
• ▸If the employee works on a public holiday, the default is an extra day's salary. By mutual agreement it can be a public holiday in lieu instead; time off in lieu is only for employees outside Part 4.

Days-in-lieu are where spreadsheets break. They are earned on a specific date, often expire under company policy, and need to be visible in the same balance screen as annual leave. If a supervisor tracks them in a notebook, you will eventually pay twice or not at all.

Balances and carry-forward

Keep four numbers per person per leave type: entitlement, earned to date (for pro-rating), taken, and carried forward, with an expiry date on anything carried. Then separate the statutory carry-forward from any extra you allow as policy, so that when a generous manager lets someone roll over 10 days, you know which 10 days are a promise the business made.

Approvals

Decide who approves what, and write it into the handbook:

• ▸Supervisor approves annual leave and days-in-lieu within blackout rules.
• ▸MCs are acknowledged, not approved, since you cannot refuse a valid MC.
• ▸Parental leave gets owner or HR sign-off because it triggers a reimbursement claim.
• ▸A named backup approver covers when the supervisor is away. Leave requests sitting in someone's WhatsApp for a week is how staff end up booking flights before approval.

The audit trail

MOM requires employers to keep records of the dates and details of public holidays and leave taken, for the latest two years for current employees, and for one year after an ex-employee leaves (MOM: employment records). The bigger value is settling disputes: who approved it, when, and whether anything changed afterwards. A shared spreadsheet where anyone can overwrite a cell cannot tell you that.

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Checklist: a leave policy that holds up

• ▸Leave types listed separately as statutory or company policy
• ▸Current MOM figures, with a date you last checked them
• ▸Pro-rating rule for new joiners and leavers
• ▸MC process: notify within 48 hours, upload on return, teleconsult MCs accepted
• ▸Half-day definition, if you offer it
• ▸Blackout dates published at least a quarter ahead
• ▸Days-in-lieu rules: how earned, how long they last, who approves
• ▸Carry-forward cap and expiry beyond the statutory minimum
• ▸Named approvers and backups
• ▸Records kept for MOM's retention periods

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When to move from a spreadsheet to software

A spreadsheet is fine for a three-person team with the same working pattern. The signals it is time to move:

Off-the-shelf HR software handles standard leave well, and for many SMEs that is the right answer. A custom tool makes sense when leave is tangled up with how you actually run the floor: rosters with minimum crew, site check-ins, public holiday rules that differ by role. Our comparison of custom vs off-the-shelf booking and operations systems walks through that decision honestly.

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What we are building (and what it does not do)

We are piloting a workforce portal for a Singapore SME. It is in pilot, not yet live, and the client stays unnamed. On the leave side it covers:

• ▸Leave requests and approvals, with owner, manager and staff roles
• ▸Half-day requests
• ▸MC photo upload attached to the sick leave record
• ▸Blackout periods that block annual leave requests on set dates
• ▸Days-in-lieu tracked alongside other balances
• ▸Every request, approval and change written to a permanent record that cannot be quietly edited afterwards
• ▸Email notifications to approvers and staff

It sits next to shift rostering with minimum-crew and public holiday rules, geofenced check-in, and a monthly attendance report that goes to payroll. It does not calculate payroll. That stays with your payroll provider or accountant.

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Talk it through with us

If leave, rosters and MCs are eating hours every month, have a look at our booking and operations solutions, then send us a WhatsApp. Tell us how many staff you have and where it keeps breaking. If an off-the-shelf HR tool will do the job, we will say so. If what you need is closer to what we are piloting, we will walk you through what that involves, starting small.