PTO Accrual Calculator

PTO accrual per pay period is your annual PTO hours divided by the number of pay periods.

Accrual per pay period = annual PTO hours ÷ pay periods in the year

Accrual per hour worked = annual PTO hours ÷ hours worked in the year

If the policy is written in days, convert it first: days multiplied by the hours in a workday gives annual hours. The number of pay periods comes from the payroll schedule: 52 for weekly, 26 for biweekly, 24 for semimonthly and 12 for monthly. Those two numbers are all a per-paycheck accrual needs. The per-hour version swaps the pay periods for hours worked, which is the method that suits part-time and variable schedules.

Fifteen days a year on a biweekly payroll accrues 4.62 hours per paycheck.

Those are the numbers the calculator opens with: 15 days of PTO a year, 8-hour workdays, a biweekly payroll and a standard 2,080-hour year.

• Annual PTO in hours: 15 × 8 = 120 hours
• Per pay period: 120 ÷ 26 = 4.62 hours
• Per hour worked: 120 ÷ 2,080 = 0.0577 hours, or 1 hour for every 17.3 hours worked
• Per month: 120 ÷ 12 = 10 hours

With no starting balance, no time used and no cap, the balance at the end of the year is 120 hours, the full 15 days. Keep the decimals in payroll. The exact figure is 4.615 hours, and rounding it down to 4.61 every paycheck leaves the employee 0.14 hours short by December (26 × 4.61 = 119.86), so either store more decimal places or true it up in the last pay period of the year.

The same allowance accrues at a different rate on each pay schedule.

The yearly total doesn't change with the payroll schedule. Only the slice per paycheck does. The same 120 hours a year becomes:

• Weekly: 120 ÷ 52 = 2.31 hours per paycheck
• Biweekly: 120 ÷ 26 = 4.62 hours
• Semimonthly: 120 ÷ 24 = 5.00 hours
• Monthly: 120 ÷ 12 = 10.00 hours

Biweekly is the schedule that confuses people. With 26 paychecks a year, two months get three paydays instead of two, so a monthly report of accrued PTO shows those months running ahead. Nothing is wrong; the year still adds up to 120 hours. Semimonthly payroll pays on two fixed dates each month, so it has 24 periods and a slightly larger accrual each time than biweekly.

Accrual per hour worked ties paid time off to the hours someone actually works.

Accruing by the hour is the usual way to handle part-time, hourly and seasonal staff, because it scales on its own. Keep the same 120-hour policy for a full-time year of 2,080 hours and the rate is 0.0577 hours per hour worked. An invented part-time employee, Dana, works 20 hours a week, or 1,040 hours a year. On that rate she earns 60 hours, exactly half of the full-time allowance, without anyone writing a separate part-time policy. To check it, switch the PTO field to hours, enter 60, and set hours worked to 1,040: the per-hour rate comes out at the same 0.0577.

Write down which hours count. Whether overtime, on-call time or paid leave itself earns accrual is a policy decision, and the calculator assumes every hour you enter as worked counts. If you report staff as full-time equivalents elsewhere, the headcount glossary entry explains how a part-time person counts in headcount and in FTE.

A balance cap pauses accrual until the employee takes some time off.

Many policies cap the balance so that time off gets used rather than banked. When the balance reaches the cap, accrual stops. It starts again once the employee takes some time off and the balance drops below the cap. The calculator applies that rule one pay period at a time.

Take an invented employee who starts the year with 80 hours under a 120-hour cap, on the default 4.62 hours per paycheck. The balance reaches 120 in pay period 9. For the other 17 pay periods nothing accrues, so they earn 40 of the 120 hours the policy grants that year and the other 80 never arrive. Enter 80 as the starting balance and 120 as the cap to see it.

The fix for that is a conversation, not a payroll setting: someone who is sitting at the cap in the spring needs time off on the calendar before the summer. A cap is also different from a use-it-or-lose-it rule, which forfeits unused hours at the end of the year. Before you write a forfeiture or payout rule into a policy, check your state labor department's guidance on unused vacation.

Federal law does not require paid vacation, so the accrual rate is a policy choice.

The U.S. Department of Labor says the Fair Labor Standards Act “does not require payment for time not worked, such as vacations, sick leave or federal or other holidays,” and that these benefits “are matters of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee's representative).” The number of days, the accrual method and any cap are set by your policy.

Most private employers offer it anyway. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics March 2026 benefits survey, paid vacation was available to 80 percent of private industry workers and 61 percent of state and local government workers. BLS also tracks consolidated leave plans, which it describes as plans where different types of leave are combined and used interchangeably within a single plan: what most people call a PTO bank. In private industry, 52 percent of nonunion workers and 29 percent of union workers had access to one, according to its paid vacations fact sheet. For the arithmetic it makes no difference. A PTO bank only means the yearly number you enter covers sick days as well as vacation.

Private industry workers averaged 11 paid vacation days after one year of service in March 2026.

If you are choosing the yearly number rather than spreading one you already have, the BLS averages by length of service are the closest thing to a national reference. In March 2026, private industry workers averaged:

• 11 paid vacation days after 1 year of service
• 16 days after 5 years
• 18 days after 10 years
• 20 days after 20 years

State and local government workers averaged 13, 16, 19 and 22 days at the same points.

The calculator's default of 15 days sits between the one-year and five-year averages. A policy where accrual rises with tenure is a tiered policy: run the calculator once per tier, with that tier's yearly days, and give each tier its own per-period rate in payroll. The step between one and five years is where a tiered policy tells people that staying is worth something, so make sure the people who reach it know their accrual just went up.

Time off that never gets taken is worth a closer look.

A PTO balance is a quiet signal. Someone who keeps hitting the cap, or who hasn't taken a day in months, is often the person carrying the most load, and if that load turns into burnout, the first anyone hears of it may be a resignation. Our work burnout quiz describes what that looks like from the employee's side, and the retention strategies guide covers what managers can change. TeamPredict sits on the other end of it, reading public LinkedIn signals to flag resignation risk early, so a manager can have the time-off conversation while it still changes the outcome. When it comes too late, the turnover cost calculator puts a number on what that departure costs.