Find how much paid time off you accrue — per pay period and per hour worked — from an annual PTO allowance.
Converts an annual PTO allowance into per-period and per-hour accrual. Per-hour accrual (total PTO hours ÷ hours worked) is how many employers credit time. Actual policies vary — caps, waiting periods, and rollover rules differ. General information only.
An annual PTO allowance is usually earned gradually — a slice each pay period, or a fraction of an hour for every hour worked. Converting days to hours (days × hours per day) and dividing by pay periods or hours worked shows exactly how the balance builds through the year.
Per pay period = (PTO days × hours/day) ÷ pay periods per year
An annual PTO allowance is a promise of hours; accrual is the schedule on which you earn them. The calculation starts by turning days into hours, because payroll systems track hours: 15 days × 8 hours = 120 hours. From there the same 120 hours can be expressed three ways, and the one your employer uses tells you how the balance behaves. Per pay period divides by the number of paychecks (26 for biweekly), so a salaried employee earns the same slice every payday whether they worked 30 hours or 60. Per hour worked divides by annual hours (2,080 for full time), so an hourly employee's balance grows only with hours actually paid — part-time staff earn proportionally, and overtime often earns nothing extra unless the policy says so. Front-loaded plans skip accrual altogether and grant the full allowance on 1 January or the anniversary date, which is the most generous shape for the employee and the one most likely to come with a claw-back clause on leaving.
What the arithmetic ignores is everything a policy document adds: a waiting period before accrual starts, a cap on the balance, whether hours roll over at year end, and whether unused hours are paid out at separation. None of those change the numbers on this page; all of them change what the numbers are worth.
15 days at 8 hours a day, paid biweekly, 2,080 hours a year. Annual PTO is 15 × 8 = 120 hours. Per pay period is 120 ÷ 26 = 4.615, shown as 4.62 hours per paycheck. Per hour worked is 120 ÷ 2,080 = 0.0577, shown as 0.058 hours for every hour paid — a 5.77% accrual rate, or about 2.31 hours per 40-hour week. The monthly figure is simply 120 ÷ 12 = 10 hours. Change the pay frequency and the per-period figure moves while nothing else does: 2.31 hours weekly, 5.00 semimonthly, 10.00 monthly. Change the hours worked to 1,040 — a half-time schedule — and the per-hour rate stays at 0.058 while a year of it earns 60 hours, which is exactly why hourly plans are written per hour.
The first is assuming the year's allowance is available in January when the plan accrues it per period, then booking a two-week trip in March against a balance of 24 hours. The second is the reverse: front-loaded plans that advance the full balance and then deduct the unearned part from the final paycheck when someone leaves in April. The third is mixing up PTO with sick leave where a state or city mandates separate sick accrual; the mandated bank often has its own rate and its own carry-over rule. The fourth is trusting a rounded per-period figure over a year: 4.62 × 26 = 120.12, so a system that rounds each period up will overstate the year by a few minutes, and one that truncates will understate it — which is why the annual figure, not the per-period one, is the number to reconcile.
This page converts one allowance for one person. It does not carry a running balance, subtract the days already taken, apply a cap, or show what a team's accrued hours add up to as a liability. For an employer that is a real number — accrued PTO is money owed — and for an employee it is the difference between a planned holiday and a denied request. A per-person sheet with accrual in, hours taken out, and the balance and cap visible is the honest next step; our client tracker is built for keeping that kind of per-person running record, and the overtime pay calculator and paycheck calculator cover the other lines on the same pay stub.
Salaried plans often accrue a fixed amount each pay period; hourly plans often accrue per hour worked, so part-time staff earn proportionally. Both are shown here.
Depends on the employer — some allow rollover, some cap it, some are "use it or lose it." Check your policy; this calculates accrual, not carryover rules.
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