PTO Calculator.

How PTO accrual actually works

Most paid-time-off policies accrue linearly across the year — if your contract grants 20 days of vacation, you earn roughly 20 ÷ 365 ≈ 0.0548 days every calendar day. The intuition that "I have my full entitlement on day one" is wrong almost everywhere; what's actually true is "I have a claim on my full entitlement, but only a fraction of it is earned at any given moment".

Some employers use per-pay-period accrual instead — typically you earn annual ÷ 24 days on each semi-monthly paycheck. Others front-load the year (you have everything on January 1 but lose it on December 31), or cap accrual at a ceiling (so you can't bank more than, say, 1.5× your annual entitlement). For all of these the linear model this calculator uses is a reasonable approximation — what it can't capture is mid-year policy changes, unpaid leave gaps, or carry-over from prior years.

When does PTO "reset"?

It depends on the policy. Three common patterns:

• Calendar year — accrual restarts January 1. Unused days either roll over capped, roll over uncapped, or expire.
• Anniversary year — accrual restarts on your hire-date anniversary. Common in legacy HR systems and shops with a lot of mid-year hires.
• Fiscal year — accrual restarts at the start of the company's fiscal year (often April 1 or July 1).

Part-time / prorated entitlement

Part-time staff usually get a prorated entitlement. If a full-time employee gets 20 days at 5 days/week, someone working 3 days/week gets 20 × (3 ÷ 5) = 12 days. Enter the prorated annual figure in the form above — the calculator handles the rest.

Why not just track this in a spreadsheet?

You can. Where spreadsheets break is when employees can request leave themselves, when approvers need to see conflicts before signing, and when year-end carry-over has rules. That's why HourSquare exists — balances, requests, approvals, and substitute search in one place, free for teams up to 10.