PTO Accrual Calculator
A PTO accrual calculator shows how much paid time off you have earned so far. The accrual rate is your annual allowance in hours ÷ the number of accrual events per year — pay periods or hours worked. Your balance is then starting balance + earned − used, limited by any cap. This tool applies your employer's policy and shows the result in hours, days and dollars.
Enter the paid-time-off policy you actually work under and this calculator returns your accrual rate per pay period and per hour worked, the time you have banked so far, your current balance in both hours and days, and what that balance would be worth at your hourly rate. It handles accrual caps, carryover limits and lump-sum policies, and builds a period-by-period schedule so you can see exactly when your balance grows.
Pick your accrual method, enter your allowance and progress, then press Calculate.
Policy-based tool. This calculator applies the paid-time-off policy you enter. It does not determine statutory or legal leave entitlement, which varies by country, state and contract. Always check your employee handbook and local rules.
How the PTO accrual calculator works
Almost every paid-time-off policy is built on the same idea: an annual allowance is broken into small pieces, and one piece is added to your balance each time you complete an accrual event. The calculator starts by converting your allowance into hours, because hours are the only unit that stays accurate across full-time staff, part-timers and anyone whose working day is not exactly eight hours. If you enter the allowance in days, it multiplies by the length of your own working day rather than assuming a standard one.
It then divides that annual figure by the number of accrual events in a year. For pay-period accrual the divisor is the number of paydays — 52, 26, 24 or 12. For hourly accrual the divisor is the number of hours a full-time employee works in a year, which gives the small per-hour figure that appears on many payslips. A lump-sum policy skips the division entirely and grants the whole allowance at the start of the leave year.
Finally the balance is assembled: whatever you carried in, plus what you have earned so far, minus what you have already taken. If you set a maximum balance, the calculator pauses accrual at that ceiling exactly as a real policy would, and marks the period where the cap first bites in the schedule. The result is shown in hours, in days, and — if you enter a rate — in money, so you can see what the balance is actually worth.
The PTO accrual formulas
- Allowance — the full leave year's paid time off
- Earned — rate × periods completed, or rate × hours worked
- Used — paid time off already taken this year
- Cap — ceiling that pauses further accrual
The three accrual methods, and who each one suits
Per pay period is the most widely used arrangement for salaried staff. The allowance is split evenly across paydays, so the balance grows in predictable steps and lines up neatly with payroll runs. Its weakness is that it assumes a steady schedule: someone who works irregular weeks earns the same amount as a colleague who worked far more hours in the same period.
Per hour worked ties accrual directly to effort, which makes it the natural fit for hourly, part-time, seasonal and shift-based roles. Because the rate per hour is a small decimal, it looks fiddly on a payslip, but it is the fairest method when hours vary from week to week. If you use this method, the time card calculator is a quick way to total the hours you then enter here.
Annual lump sum, sometimes called front-loading, grants the entire allowance on day one of the leave year. Employees like it because the full balance is available immediately, and it removes a layer of administration. The trade-off is that an employer carries the full liability from the first day, and someone who leaves mid-year may have taken more leave than they had strictly earned.
Accrual rate reference table
These figures assume an eight-hour working day and a full-time year of 2,080 hours. If your working day or annual hours differ, the calculator above will produce your own numbers, but this table is a useful sanity check against a payslip.
| Annual allowance | Hours/yr | Per hour worked | Weekly | Biweekly | Semimonthly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 days | 80 | 0.0385 | 1.54 | 3.08 | 3.33 | 6.67 |
| 12 days | 96 | 0.0462 | 1.85 | 3.69 | 4.00 | 8.00 |
| 15 days | 120 | 0.0577 | 2.31 | 4.62 | 5.00 | 10.00 |
| 20 days | 160 | 0.0769 | 3.08 | 6.15 | 6.67 | 13.33 |
| 25 days | 200 | 0.0962 | 3.85 | 7.69 | 8.33 | 16.67 |
| 30 days | 240 | 0.1154 | 4.62 | 9.23 | 10.00 | 20.00 |
How many days is your PTO balance?
Balances are usually tracked in hours but taken in days, and the conversion depends entirely on the length of your working day. Divide the hours by your normal daily hours. The table below covers the balances people ask about most, for a standard eight-hour day, a 7.5-hour day and a 12-hour shift.
| PTO balance | 8-hour day | 7.5-hour day | 12-hour shift |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 hours | 5.0 days | 5.3 days | 3.3 shifts |
| 80 hours | 10.0 days | 10.7 days | 6.7 shifts |
| 100 hours | 12.5 days | 13.3 days | 8.3 shifts |
| 120 hours | 15.0 days | 16.0 days | 10.0 shifts |
| 160 hours | 20.0 days | 21.3 days | 13.3 shifts |
| 200 hours | 25.0 days | 26.7 days | 16.7 shifts |
| 240 hours | 30.0 days | 32.0 days | 20.0 shifts |
This is also why employers track leave in hours rather than days. A "day" is not a fixed quantity across a workforce — a part-time day, a 7.5-hour office day and a 12-hour shift are all different — so hours keep every employee's balance directly comparable.
Caps, carryover and the end of the leave year
Two different limits are often confused. An accrual cap is a ceiling on the balance you may hold at any moment; when you touch it, accrual simply stops until you take some leave and fall back below the line. A carryover limit applies only at the year boundary and restricts how much of a leftover balance moves into the new leave year. A policy can have one, both or neither.
Employers use caps because an unused balance is a real financial liability sitting on the books, and a large accumulated balance becomes expensive if several people leave at once. For employees the practical consequence is that hitting a cap means working without earning any further time off, which is effectively a silent pay cut. If the schedule below your result shows the cap engaging, that is a signal to book leave rather than keep banking it.
Whether a balance can simply be forfeited at year end depends entirely on where you work. Some jurisdictions treat accrued paid vacation as earned wages that cannot be taken away once earned; others permit forfeiture provided the rule was communicated clearly in advance. Because this varies so widely, the calculator models what your policy says rather than predicting what the law requires.
What an unused balance is worth
Multiplying a balance by an hourly rate turns an abstract number of hours into a figure that is easy to weigh up. Thirty hours might sound modest until it is expressed as several hundred dollars of earned but untaken pay. For salaried employees, an approximate hourly rate can be found by dividing annual salary by the annual hours in your policy — a $58,240 salary over 2,080 hours is $28.00 an hour, which is the default loaded here.
Whether that value is ever actually paid to you is a separate question from what it is worth. There is no single federal rule in the United States requiring payment for unused paid time off when employment ends; some states treat accrued vacation as wages that must be paid out, many employers pay out vacation but not accrued sick time, and elsewhere it comes down to the contract. Treat the money figure as the amount at stake, not as a promise.
Mistakes that make a PTO balance wrong
The most common error is mixing days and hours in the same calculation. A policy quoted as "three weeks" means 120 hours for someone on eight-hour days but only 112.5 for someone on 7.5-hour days, and using the wrong figure skews every later number. Convert to hours once, at the start, and stay in hours.
The second is forgetting the waiting period. Many policies delay either the start of accrual or the point at which newly accrued time may actually be booked. If your handbook mentions a probationary period, reduce the number of completed pay periods accordingly, or your calculated balance will run ahead of the official one.
Third, people often assume the leave year runs from January. Plenty of employers instead run it from each employee's hire date, which means your reset point is personal to you and your "periods completed" should be counted from that anniversary rather than from the new year.
Fourth, booked-but-not-yet-taken leave is easy to double count. Decide whether the "already used" figure includes future approved bookings, then be consistent. Including them gives you a realistic picture of what is genuinely still available to request; excluding them shows what you have banked today. Either is valid, but mixing the two produces a balance that matches neither.
Finally, do not confuse a PTO bank with separate statutory sick leave. Many places now require paid sick time in addition to whatever an employer voluntarily offers, and that entitlement usually accrues under its own rules. Modelling both in one figure hides the fact that they may be governed quite differently.
Estimate only — not legal, HR or payroll advice. This tool models the policy you enter and does not determine statutory leave entitlement. Confirm your position with your employer or a qualified professional.
How to use it & key terms
Choose how your employer adds time off, enter the annual allowance from your handbook, set your working day and pay frequency, then add how far through the year you are and anything you have already taken. Press Calculate to see your accrual rate, earned time, current balance and its value.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| PTO | Paid time off — a bank of paid leave, often covering vacation, sick and personal days. |
| Accrual | Earning leave gradually rather than receiving it all at once. |
| Accrual rate | The amount added per pay period or per hour worked. |
| Allowance | The total paid leave granted for a full leave year. |
| Balance | Time currently available: carried in, plus earned, minus used. |
| Accrual cap | A ceiling on the balance; accrual pauses once it is reached. |
| Carryover | Unused time moved from one leave year into the next. |
| Front-loading | Granting the whole annual allowance at the start of the year. |
| Leave year | The twelve-month period a policy resets on — calendar or hire-date based. |
Sources & methodology
The annual allowance is first normalised to hours: when entered in days it is multiplied by the hours-per-work-day figure supplied by the user. For pay-period accrual the rate is the annual hours divided by the selected number of pay periods per year, and time earned is that rate multiplied by the number of completed periods. For hourly accrual the rate is the annual hours divided by the full-year hours figure, and time earned is that rate multiplied by the hours worked so far. A lump-sum policy grants the full annual allowance immediately. The balance is the starting balance plus time earned minus time used. When a maximum balance above zero is supplied, the running balance is capped at that value at each accrual step, so accrual pauses rather than exceeding the ceiling, and the schedule marks the first period at which the cap applies. Days are derived by dividing hours by the hours-per-work-day value, and the monetary value is the balance in hours multiplied by the hourly rate. Hours are shown to two decimal places.
Sources: Standard payroll accrual arithmetic. Policy structures — per-period accrual, per-hour accrual, front-loading, accrual caps and carryover limits — follow common United States employer practice. No statutory entitlement is assumed or asserted, because paid-leave law differs by country and state.
Frequently asked questions
What is PTO accrual?
PTO accrual is the process of earning paid time off gradually as you work, rather than receiving the whole year's allowance at once. A typical policy converts an annual allowance into a small amount added to your balance each pay period or for every hour you work. Accrual spreads the cost for the employer and means a leaver has only earned the portion of leave matching the time they actually worked, which is why most employers prefer it to front-loading.
How do you calculate a PTO accrual rate?
Divide the annual PTO allowance in hours by the number of accrual events in a year. For pay-period accrual, divide by the number of pay periods: 120 hours over 26 biweekly periods is about 4.62 hours each period. For hourly accrual, divide by the annual hours worked: 120 hours over 2,080 hours is about 0.0577 hours of PTO for every hour worked. Converting days to hours first, by multiplying days by the length of your working day, keeps everything in one unit.
How much PTO is 15 days a year?
On a standard eight-hour working day, 15 days equals 120 hours of paid time off a year. Paid biweekly that accrues at about 4.62 hours per period, semimonthly at 5.00 hours, monthly at 10.00 hours and weekly at about 2.31 hours. If your working day is a different length, multiply the number of days by your own daily hours instead of assuming eight, because a 7.5-hour day turns 15 days into 112.5 hours rather than 120.
How do I convert PTO hours into days?
Divide your balance in hours by the number of hours in your normal working day. A balance of 60 hours is 7.5 days for someone working eight-hour days, but 8 days for someone working 7.5-hour days. This is why employers usually track PTO in hours rather than days: hours stay accurate for part-time staff, shift workers and anyone whose daily hours vary, while a day is not a fixed quantity across a workforce.
What is a PTO accrual cap?
A cap is the maximum balance a policy allows you to hold at any one time. Once you reach it, accrual pauses and you stop earning new time until you take some leave and drop below the ceiling. Caps are common because unused balances are a financial liability an employer must carry on the books. A cap differs from a carryover limit, which restricts how much can move from one leave year to the next rather than what you can hold day to day.
What does use it or lose it mean?
A use-it-or-lose-it policy means any balance left at the end of the leave year is forfeited rather than carried forward. Whether such a policy is permitted depends entirely on where you work, because some jurisdictions treat accrued paid vacation as earned wages that cannot simply be removed, while others allow forfeiture if the rule is clearly communicated in advance. Check your employee handbook and your local rules before assuming a balance will expire.
Do I get paid for unused PTO when I leave a job?
It depends on your location and your employer's policy. There is no single federal rule in the United States requiring payment for unused paid time off on separation. Some states treat accrued vacation as earned wages that must be paid out, others leave it to the contract, and many employers pay out vacation but not accrued sick time. This calculator shows what your balance would be worth at your hourly rate so you can see the amount at stake, but it cannot tell you whether you are entitled to it.
How is PTO prorated for a new hire?
With accrual-based policies proration happens naturally, because you only earn time for the periods you have actually worked. Someone joining after ten of twenty-six biweekly periods simply accrues over the remaining sixteen. If your employer front-loads the allowance instead, proration is usually done by multiplying the full annual allowance by the fraction of the leave year you will be employed. Many policies also add a waiting period before newly accrued time can be booked.
What is the difference between PTO and vacation?
Vacation traditionally refers to leave taken for rest and holidays, tracked separately from sick days and personal days. PTO, or paid time off, usually means a single combined bank covering all of those reasons, which the employee draws on without having to explain why. A combined PTO bank offers more flexibility and less administration, though it can blur the line between rest and illness, and in some places the two types are treated differently when it comes to payout on leaving.
How does PTO accrue for part-time employees?
Part-time accrual is most often handled with the per-hour-worked method, so time off builds in direct proportion to the hours actually worked. Someone working half the hours of a full-time colleague accrues half the paid time off, which is both simple and fair. The alternative is to prorate the annual allowance by the fraction of full-time hours worked. Tracking in hours rather than days matters here, because a part-time day may be much shorter than a full-time one.
Does this calculator tell me my legal leave entitlement?
No, and that is deliberate. It applies the policy you enter and nothing more. Statutory leave rules differ enormously between countries and between states, and many places have separate paid sick leave laws that sit on top of an employer's PTO policy. Use this tool to model your own employer's scheme, check a balance or plan ahead, then confirm your actual entitlement against your employee handbook, your contract and the rules that apply where you work.
Why does my accrued balance differ from my payslip?
The usual causes are a waiting period before accrual starts, a cap that quietly paused your earning, leave that was booked but not yet deducted, or a leave year that begins on your hire date rather than in January. Rounding also matters, since some systems round each period's accrual to two decimals while others carry the full fraction. Compare the accrual per period first, then the number of periods counted, and the difference usually becomes obvious.
How much PTO does the average US worker get?
There is no legal minimum for paid vacation in the United States, so it varies widely by employer, industry and length of service. It is common for policies to start around ten paid days a year for new employees and rise with tenure, often reaching fifteen to twenty days after several years of service. Because there is no standard, the only figure that matters for your own planning is the allowance written in your handbook or offer letter, which is what you should enter here.
Is my data saved when I use this calculator?
No. Everything is calculated by JavaScript running inside your own browser, and no figures are uploaded, stored on a server or shared with anyone. There is no sign-up and nothing persists once you close the tab. If you want to keep the result, use the copy or print buttons, or the share link, which places the values in the web address itself rather than saving them anywhere.
How many days is 120 hours of PTO?
On a standard eight-hour working day, 120 hours of PTO is 15 days. The same balance is 16 days for someone working 7.5-hour days, or 10 shifts for someone on 12-hour shifts, because the answer depends on the length of your own working day rather than a fixed standard. The rule is simply hours divided by daily hours, so 160 hours is 20 days on an eight-hour day and 80 hours is 10 days.
What does unlimited PTO mean?
Unlimited PTO means an employer sets no fixed annual allowance and no accruing balance; time off is requested and approved as needed. Because nothing accrues, there is usually no balance to carry over and, in most arrangements, nothing to pay out when someone leaves. Research and reporting have repeatedly noted that people on unlimited policies often take about the same amount of leave or slightly less, since there is no visible balance prompting them to use it. If your employer offers unlimited PTO, this calculator is not the right tool, because there is no accrual to track.
What is the difference between FTO and PTO?
PTO, or paid time off, is a bank of leave you earn and draw down, so it has a balance you can check. FTO, or flexible time off, works like an unlimited policy: there is no accruing balance, and time away is agreed with a manager as it is needed. The practical differences are that PTO usually carries over and is often paid out when employment ends, while FTO generally does neither because there is no accrued balance to pay. Always check which model your handbook actually describes, as the labels are used loosely.