PTO accrual calculator
See exactly how fast your PTO builds: per pay period, per month, per year, and a projected balance for any future date, with your accrual cap respected.
Accrual per year
15.0 days
120.1 hours a year, at 4.62 hours per biweekly period.
An estimate. Your company policy and state law control accrual, caps, and payout: check the employee handbook.
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All toolsHow PTO accrual math works
Most accrual systems are the same simple machine: a fixed number of hours added every pay period. Multiply by the periods in a year and divide by 8 to get days. The complications are caps, use-it-or-lose-it policies, and what happens to the balance when you leave.
The core formula
Hours accrued per pay period times pay periods per year equals annual accrual. Biweekly is 26 periods, semimonthly is 24, so the same per-period number yields different annual totals. Divide hours by 8 to state it in days.
Common rates, translated to biweekly hours
10 days a year (80 hours) is about 3.08 hours per biweekly period. 15 days (120 hours) is about 4.62 hours. 20 days (160 hours) is about 6.15 hours. If your handbook quotes days per year, this is how it usually shows up on a biweekly paystub.
Caps stop the clock
An accrual cap is a maximum balance: once you hit it, you stop earning PTO until you use some. If your policy has a cap, enter it and the projection here will not grow past it, exactly as your balance would not.
Use-it-or-lose-it depends on your state
Some employers zero out unused PTO at year end. Whether that is legal, and whether accrued PTO must be paid out when you leave, varies by state: California, for example, treats accrued vacation as earned wages that cannot be forfeited. Your handbook and your state’s law control, not this calculator.
Unlimited PTO has no balance, by design
Unlimited policies mean nothing accrues, so there is nothing to pay out when you exit. For some people the flexibility is worth it; just know that an accrued balance is a real dollar asset in payout states and unlimited PTO is not.
PTO accrual questions, answered plainly
Take the hours you earn each pay period and multiply by the number of periods in a year: 52 weekly, 26 biweekly, 24 semimonthly, or 12 monthly. Divide by 8 to convert hours to days. Accruing 4.62 hours biweekly works out to about 120 hours, or 15 days, a year.
At an 8-hour workday, 15 days is 120 hours. On a biweekly schedule that accrues at about 4.62 hours per pay period; semimonthly it is 5 hours per period. The calculator converts in both directions.
Count the pay periods between now and the date, multiply by your per-period accrual, and add your current balance. Pick a date in the calculator and it does this, respecting your accrual cap if you set one. Planned time off you take before that date is not subtracted, so treat it as a ceiling.
It depends on your state and your employer’s written policy. Some states require payout of accrued, unused vacation as earned wages; others leave it to the policy. Check your handbook and your state labor department before you resign, especially with a large balance.
A cap is a maximum balance beyond which you stop accruing until you spend some PTO. Caps are broadly legal, including in states that ban use-it-or-lose-it forfeiture, because you stop earning rather than losing what you earned. Reasonable caps are commonly around 1.5 to 2 times the annual accrual.
No. The math runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter on this page is sent to a server or stored.