PTO Accrual Calculator

What this calculator does

Most people know their PTO balance today and have no idea what it will be in April, which is exactly when it matters — because that is when the leave request goes in. Payroll portals show the current number and almost never project forward.

This calculator does the projection: it takes your balance, your accrual rate and the basis your employer uses, and tells you what you will have by a chosen point, in hours and in days. It also flags the two situations that cost people time — hitting an accrual cap, and planning more leave than you will have earned.

The three accrual bases

The same headline allowance behaves differently depending on how it is earned, and this is the single biggest source of confusion.

Per pay period. A fixed number of hours each payroll run, regardless of hours worked. Three weeks a year on a biweekly schedule is 120 ÷ 26 = 4.62 hours per period. Predictable, and the most common arrangement for salaried staff.

Per hour worked. You earn a fraction of an hour for every hour on the clock — a common formulation is 0.0577 hours per hour worked, which produces 120 hours across a 2,080-hour year. The consequence is that a short week earns less, and unpaid leave earns nothing at all. Typical for hourly roles.

Annual grant. The whole allowance appears at once, usually on a hire anniversary or 1 January. Generous in January, awkward if you leave mid-year, since employers commonly claw back or prorate the unearned portion.

The 2,080-hour figure behind these conversions is the same assumption examined in the 2,080-hour rule, and it carries the same caveats.

Accrual caps are where hours disappear

A cap stops accrual once your balance reaches a ceiling — often 1.5 or 2 times the annual allowance. You do not lose what you have. You stop earning more.

This is a slow, silent cost. Someone earning 120 hours a year against a 180-hour cap, who consistently takes only a week, stops accruing partway through the year and never notices, because the balance on the payslip still looks healthy. The calculator flags this and shows how many hours the cap absorbs.

A cap is different from use-it-or-lose-it, which zeroes some or all of the balance on a fixed date. A handful of states restrict use-it-or-lose-it policies on the grounds that accrued vacation is earned wages; most do not. If your policy has a hard forfeiture date, work backwards from it.

What this leaves out

The projection is arithmetic on the policy you describe, so it does not know:

• Waiting periods. Many employers withhold accrual, or the right to use it, for the first 90 days.
• Tenure tiers. Allowances commonly step up at three, five and ten years. If yours increases mid-window, run the two periods separately.
• Separate sick leave banks. Where sick time is tracked apart from vacation — including under state and city paid-sick-leave mandates — this models one bank at a time.
• Holidays. Company holidays are usually not drawn from PTO, so do not subtract them.
• Approval. An available balance is not an approved absence. Blackout periods and staffing rules are policy matters no calculator can predict.
• Payout at separation. Whether an unused balance converts to cash is a state-law and policy question, not an accrual one.

Using the projection well

Two habits get the most out of it. First, project to a specific date you care about — the week of a wedding, the school holidays — rather than to year end, and enter the pay periods between now and then. Second, enter time off you have already booked but not yet taken, because payroll balances usually do not deduct it until it happens, which makes the on-screen number flattering.

If your time off is unpaid rather than accrued, the income side matters more than the balance: the take-home pay calculator shows what a missing week costs after deductions, and the overtime pay calculator covers the other direction, where extra hours are worth 1.5×.