Nebraska Earned Sick Time

Nebraska's Legislative Bill 415, signed into law on June 5, 2025, introduces changes for employers under the Nebraska Healthy Families and Workplaces Act, which takes effect October 1, 2025. The bill mandates that most employers must provide earned paid sick time (PST) to eligible employees, with accrual set at one hour for every 30 hours worked. Employers with 20 or more employees may cap annual accrual and use at 56 hours, while small employers—defined as those with 11 to 19 employees—may cap it at 40 hours.

Notably, employers with fewer than 11 employees are exempt from the PST requirement altogether. The law also allows employers to satisfy the mandate through existing paid leave policies, provided those policies meet or exceed the law's requirements and allow leave to be used as sick time.

For employees, LB 415 narrows eligibility and introduces a waiting period for accrual. Workers must complete 80 consecutive hours of employment in Nebraska before they begin earning PST, though they may use it as it accrues. The law excludes several categories of workers from coverage, including independent contractors, seasonal agricultural workers, employees under age 16, and those working fewer than 80 hours annually in the state.

In FCA, you will need to have 2 Payroll Items.

Accrued ESST Hours

• Setup a new payroll item to accrue the hours.
• Enter ACC Sick  in the Lookup field.
• Enter Sick Hrs in the Description field.
• Select Accruable Benefit from the Type drop-down.
• Enter .0333 in the Amount or % field.
• Select Total Hours Worked from the Based On drop-down.
• Enter 40 (or 72) in the Limit field based on the number of paid employees in the company.
• Select Annual Calendar from the Limit Type drop-down.
• Select the Accrued Sick Hours Statistic Class account from the Expense Account drop-down.
• Select the Accrual Offset Statistic Class account from the Liability Account drop down.
• Select Sick from the Tracking drop-down.

Used ESST Hours

• Setup a new payroll item to accrue the hours.
• Enter USED SICK  in the Lookup field.
• Enter Sick Hrs in the Description field.
• Select Accruable Benefit from the Type drop-down.
• Enter -1.00 in the Amount or % field.
• Select Items Worked from the Based On drop-down.
• Select your Sick Pay item from the Selected Items
• Select the Accrued Sick Hours Statistic Class account from the Expense Account drop-down.
• Select the Accrual Offset Statistic Class account from the Liability Account drop down.
• Select Sick from the Tracking drop-down.

Note: The program will combine the two items on the check stubs because they have the same Tracking and identical text in the description fields.

Insert the two new payroll items into the bottom grid of all applicable Payroll Templates.

After these items have been set up and inserted into the template, the program will multiply the number of hours worked by .0333 to calculate the Accrued Sick Hours and save the result to the check as long as the year to date total for the accrual does not exceed 40. The program will also multiply the Qty entered (if any) for the SickPay item by -1.00 to calculate the hours used.

You can set up a Payroll Items Custom Report to show the year to date accrued and used hours for sick pay. Click the link for specific instructions.