PTO calculator: prorated days and accrual per paycheck

What is PTO accrual, really?

It's Tuesday morning and your newest hire, three weeks in, catches you by the coffee machine. "So how much time off do I actually have?" You know the policy says 15 days. You also know she started in July, you run payroll every other Friday, and nobody ever wrote down how the math is supposed to work...

That's PTO accrual. Paid time off is the pot of paid days an employee can take for vacation, errands or just a long weekend. Accrual is the rule that decides how fast that pot fills up. Some companies drop the whole year in on day one. Others add a little every paycheck, or a little for every hour worked.

None of these is wrong. But you do have to pick one, write it down and apply it the same way to everyone. The calculator above shows all three numbers side by side, so you can see what each method means before you commit.

What are the three common ways to accrue PTO?

Here's how the same 15 day policy, with 8 hour days, plays out under each method for a full-time employee on 40 hours a week.

• Lump sum (front-loaded). All 15 days, 120 hours, land on January 1 or on the work anniversary. It's the easiest to explain. The catch: someone can take all of it in February and leave in March.
• Per pay period. The 120 hours are split across paychecks. On biweekly payroll that's 120 ÷ 26 = 4.62 hours per paycheck. The balance grows steadily and nobody gets ahead of what they've earned.
• Per hour worked. 120 hours ÷ 2,080 hours worked a year = 0.0577 hours of PTO per hour on the clock. It's the fairest for people whose hours move around, and the most admin if you track it by hand.

My honest take for most small teams: accrue per pay period. It's simple enough to explain in one sentence, it lines up with the payslip people already look at, and it protects you from the "took it all, then quit" problem without anyone feeling watched.

How do you prorate PTO for a mid-year hire?

You give them the share of the year they'll actually be with you. The calculator counts calendar days employed, a common method for a start or exit partway through the year.

• Start on July 1, 2026: 184 of 365 days, so 15 × 184 ÷ 365 = 7.56 days, or 60.49 hours.
• Start on April 1, 2026: 275 of 365 days, so 11.3 days.
• Leave on March 31, 2026 after a full prior year: 90 days employed this year, so 3.7 days.

Some employers round to whole months instead, which would make the July hire 7.5 days. That's fine too. What matters is that you use the same rule for every hire, so two people who start a week apart don't end up comparing notes and finding a mystery gap.

And if someone has already used more than they've earned by the time they leave? The calculator shows that as overdrawn. Whether you can recover it from a final paycheck depends on your written policy and on state law, so check before you deduct anything.

How does PTO work for part-time employees?

The cleanest approach is to scale the allowance by hours. The calculator divides the employee's weekly hours by full-time hours and applies that share to the policy.

• 20 hours a week on a 40 hour full-time week: half the allowance, 7.5 days or 60 hours. On biweekly payroll that's 2.31 hours per paycheck.
• 30 hours a week: three quarters, 11.25 days or 90 hours.
• Per hour worked, the rate stays at 0.0577 for everyone. That's the beauty of hourly accrual: part time takes care of itself.

One tip from experience: for part-timers, talk in hours, not days. "You have 60 hours" is clear. "You have 7.5 days" makes a 4 hour a day employee wonder whether a day means their day or a full-time one. In the calculator a day is always a full-time day.

Do US or UK laws set your PTO policy?

In the US, mostly no. There's no federal law requiring paid vacation, so the policy is yours to design. Two things still matter, though. Some states and cities require paid sick leave, with their own accrual rates and caps. And a few states, California being the best known, treat earned vacation as wages: use-it-or-lose-it isn't allowed there and unused vacation is paid out when someone leaves.

The UK is different. Most workers have a legal right to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year, which is 28 days for a five day week, and bank holidays can count toward it. This calculator doesn't apply the UK statutory rules. Use it to model your company policy on top of them, and check GOV.UK for the legal minimum.

What about carry-over and caps?

Accrual without a limit means balances creep up forever, and a big balance is a big liability if it has to be paid out. Most small employers pick one of these:

• a cap on the balance, so accrual pauses once someone reaches, say, 1.5 times the yearly allowance
• a carry-over limit, so only a set number of days roll into the new year
• a deadline to use carried-over days, where local law allows it

How does HR FLARE track PTO balances?

Doing the math once is easy. Keeping twenty balances right all year, through new hires, part-time changes and the January rollover, is where spreadsheets break. In HR FLARE, employees request time off themselves, their manager approves it, and the balance updates straight away. Public holidays are counted, so a holiday never eats into anyone's PTO by accident.

• Annual grant or monthly accrual: give the whole allowance up front, or let it build month by month.
• Carry-over: unused days roll into the new year for you.
• Everyone sees their own balance on the web, in the Mac app or in the phone app.

It's free for up to 5 employees, no credit card, in English or Deutsch, and GDPR-ready if you have people in Europe.