PTO Accrual Calculator

The cap is the part worth watching

Most American accrual policies stop earning at a ceiling rather than paying out the excess. Once you are at the cap, every pay period earns you nothing at all until you take some leave, which is a quiet pay cut that continues for as long as you let it. The calculator reports both the date you reach it and the hours you would forfeit by carrying on, because the second number is what usually prompts people to book something.

A cap of one and a half or two times the annual accrual is the common design, and it is deliberate: it exists to stop enormous balances appearing on the employer’s books, and to make you take your leave. Treating it as a target to sit at is the opposite of what it is for.

Accrual versus a lump sum on 1 January

Two systems dominate and they behave very differently. Accrual drips hours in each pay period, so leave taken in January is effectively borrowed and a departure mid-year leaves you with a part-year balance. A front-loaded grant gives you the full year on day one, which is better for early holidays and often comes with a use-it-or-lose-it deadline instead of a cap. Check which one you are on before planning anything around a balance.

What happens when you leave

Whether an unused balance is paid out on termination is a matter of state law, not company policy. California, among others, treats accrued vacation as earned wages that must be paid; many states leave it entirely to the employment agreement, in which case an unwritten policy usually means nothing is owed. If you are planning to resign with a large balance, this is worth establishing early rather than at the exit interview.

Unlimited PTO is not the same as more PTO

Policies with no accrual and no balance remove the ceiling and also remove the payout, since there is nothing accrued to pay. Research on them consistently finds people take slightly fewer days, not more, because there is no visible balance creating permission. If you are on such a policy this calculator has nothing to project — but the underlying point stands: decide a number of days in advance and book them.

Converting hours to days

Balances are kept in hours and holidays are taken in days, which is where confusion starts. A part-time schedule or a compressed week changes the divisor: on four ten-hour days, 80 hours is eight days, not ten. Set the working-day field to your actual day, not the standard eight.