How much PTO do I accrue per hour worked?

Divide the annual allowance by the hours in a full-time year, conventionally 2,080 (40 hours × 52 weeks). One week a year is 0.0192 hours per hour worked, two weeks is 0.0385, three weeks is 0.0577, and four weeks is 0.0769. Multiply by the hours you actually work to get your own accrual: someone on 24 hours a week under a two-week policy earns about 0.92 hours a week, or roughly 48 hours across a year.

How many days is 80 hours of PTO?

Ten days on a standard eight-hour workday — the reason a two-week policy is usually quoted as 80 hours. The conversion depends entirely on how long your workday is: 80 hours is 10.67 days on a 7.5-hour day, 8 days on a 10-hour day, and 6.67 days on a 12-hour shift. The calculator on this page lets you switch the whole projection between hours and days and set the workday length, because a shift worker and an office worker mean very different things by 'ten days off'.

What is a PTO accrual cap and what happens when I hit it?

An accrual cap is a ceiling on the balance itself. Once you reach it, new accrual stops landing until you take time off and the balance falls back below the ceiling — the hours you already hold are untouched. It is not the same as a rollover limit, which removes hours once a year. The projection here reports the accrual lost to a cap as a separate figure, because for anyone who rarely takes leave that number can quietly exceed a full year's allowance.

What is a rollover limit, and can unused PTO just disappear?

A rollover or carryover limit is applied once a year, at the accrual-year boundary: anything above the limit at that moment does not cross into the new year. That is what 'use it or lose it' means, and it is why balances get spent in December. Whether an employer may do this varies — several states treat accrued vacation as earned wages and restrict or prohibit forfeiting it, while others leave it to policy. Check the rule where you work; nothing here is legal advice.

How much PTO is two weeks a year per paycheck?

Divide 80 hours by the number of pay periods in your year. Weekly pay gives 1.54 hours a check, biweekly gives 3.08, semi-monthly gives 3.33, and monthly gives 6.67. The annual total is identical in all four; only the size and rhythm of each deposit changes. Biweekly and semi-monthly sound alike and are not the same — 26 deposits against 24 — which is the most common source of a projection that quietly drifts off by a few hours.

Do part-time employees accrue PTO?

It depends on the policy, and the basis matters more than the job title. Where accrual is per hour worked, a part-time schedule accrues proportionally — 24 hours a week earns about three fifths of what 40 does under the same rate. Where the policy grants a flat amount per pay period or per year, part-time employees may receive the same, a pro-rated share, or nothing at all. Some state and local paid-sick-leave laws set their own minimum accrual for part-time work.

Is unused PTO paid out when I leave a job?

It varies enormously by state and by policy. Some states treat accrued vacation as earned wages that must be paid out on separation and restrict forfeiture clauses; others leave payout entirely to the employer's written policy, and sick-leave balances are often treated differently from vacation. The dollar figure this calculator can put on a balance is illustrative — hours × your hourly rate, before tax — and is not a statement that the amount is owed to you.

Finance

PTO Accrual Calculator

PTO balance = starting balance + accrual rate × periods − time taken, capped where a policy says so. Project a paid-time-off balance forward to any date — accruing per hour worked, per paycheck, or from an annual grant, in hours or days, with accrual caps and rollover limits handled.

Your policy

How PTO is earned

Pay frequency

Balance today

What you already hold, before this projection starts

Accrued each pay period

Added on every one of the 26 pay dates a year

Taken each pay period

Leave zero if you are projecting an untouched balance

Accrual cap — stop earning at a maximum balance

Maximum balance

Accrual pauses here and restarts once time is taken

Carryover limit — cut the balance once a year

Projection starts

The day the balance above is correct

Balance wanted on

The date you are planning around

Workday length

Converts hours into days

Hourly rate (optional)

Values the balance in dollars

Balance on Jan 1, 2027

120.08hrs

= 15.01 days$3,002.00 at $25.00/hr

Start 40 hrsEnd 120.08 hrsCap 160 hrs

Accrued per period

3.08 hrs

Accrued per year

80.08 hrs

Pay periods

Total accrued

80.08 hrs

Total taken

0 hrs

Per hour worked

0.0385 h

A projection of your own policy's arithmetic, not a statement of entitlement. Accrual, caps, carryover, and payout are set by your employer, your contract, and in some places by state or local law — this is general information, not legal or employment advice. Any dollar figure is illustrative and before tax.

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The basics

The two ways a PTO balance grows

Every paid-time-off policy is one of two shapes, and the arithmetic follows from which one you are on. Either the balance grows a little at a time as you work, or the whole allowance arrives at once and drains from there. The United States has no federal law requiring paid vacation at all, so the shape — and the size — comes from your employer, your contract, or in some places a state or local sick-leave rule.

balance = start + rate × periods − taken

Accrual: it builds up

A fixed amount lands on every paycheck, or a fraction of an hour lands for every hour worked. Slower to be useful at the start of a job, and it keeps growing until a cap or a rollover limit gets in the way.

3.08 h × 26 biweekly periods = 80 h in a year

balance = grant − taken

Annual grant: it arrives whole

The full year's allowance is handed over at the start of the accrual year. Simpler to reason about and better for an early holiday, usually paired with a rule about what happens if you leave part-way through the year.

120 h granted on Jan 1, 2026, spendable from day one

Method

How to project a PTO balance by hand

Four steps, and the only hard part is reading your own policy carefully enough to know which basis it is written on.

1
Find the accrual rate and the basis it is written on
Policies quote the same rate three different ways — per hour worked, per pay period, or per year. Convert whichever you were given onto a single basis before anything else, because mixing a per-year rate a with a per-period count is where most projections go wrong.
a = 80 h a year = 3.08 h biweekly = 0.0385 h per hour worked
2
Count the pay periods between today and the date you care about
Not weeks, and not months — pay periods, because that is when accrual actually lands. A year holds 52 weekly, 26 biweekly, 24 semi-monthly, or 12 monthly periods, and biweekly and semi-monthly are not interchangeable.
Jan 1, 2026 → Jan 1, 2027 = 26 biweekly pay periods
3
Add the accrual to the balance you already hold
Start from today's balance rather than from zero, then add the rate multiplied by the period count. If you plan to take time off along the way, subtract it period by period rather than all at the end — the order matters as soon as a cap is involved.
0 h + 3.08 × 26 = 80 h
4
Apply the cap, then the rollover limit
An accrual cap stops new hours landing once the balance reaches it. A rollover limit cuts the balance once a year at the accrual-year boundary. Apply the cap continuously and the rollover only at the boundary — swapping the two produces a plausible answer that is wrong by an entire year's accrual.
Capped at 160 h · rollover keeps 40 h across Jan 1

Reference

Every common allowance, on every pay schedule

The same annual allowance expressed five ways. Find the row that matches your policy and read across to the column that matches your paycheck — the number in that cell is what should land each period.

Allowance	Hours a year	Days (8 h)	Weekly	Biweekly	Semi-monthly	Monthly	Per hour worked
1 week	40	5	0.77	1.54	1.67	3.33	0.0192
2 weeks	80	10	1.54	3.08	3.33	6.67	0.0385
12 days	96	12	1.85	3.69	4	8	0.0462
3 weeks	120	15	2.31	4.62	5	10	0.0577
4 weeks	160	20	3.08	6.15	6.67	13.33	0.0769
5 weeks	200	25	3.85	7.69	8.33	16.67	0.0962

Per-hour rates use the 2,080-hour convention (40 h × 52 weeks), a benchmarking convention rather than a legal figure. Illustrative allowances only — no US federal law requires paid vacation.

26 periods a year

Biweekly

26 pay periods a year, one every 14 days — the most common US schedule

24 periods a year

Semi-monthly

24 pay periods a year, on the 15th and the last day of each month

Worked examples

Six policies, projected forward

The same engine run across the arrangements people actually have: a plain biweekly accrual, a per-hour rate on a part-time schedule, a front-loaded grant, a balance that runs into a cap, a rollover limit that bites at New Year, and a balance being spent as it builds. Switch any tab between hours and days.

The most common American arrangement: a two-week annual allowance, earned in equal slices on every second Friday. Nothing is taken, so the balance simply climbs to the full allowance over the year.

Policy assumed: 80 hours a year, accrued over 26 biweekly pay periods, no cap, no carryover limit.

Given Jan 1, 2026 → Jan 1, 2027 · 26 pay periods · starting balance 0 hrs

Accrual each period: 3.08 hrs × 26 = 80 hrs accrued

Running total: 0 hrs + 80 hrs = 80 hrs

Annual rate: 80 hrs a year (2 weeks) · 0.0385 h per hour worked

Balance on Jan 1, 2027 = 80 hrs

26 pay periods

Quick chart

How much PTO have I earned after X hours worked?

Every common allowance against every common hours-worked total, plus the per-paycheck and per-hour views of the same policy. Switch the whole grid between hours and days, and set the workday length if yours is not eight hours.

Show

Unit

Hours worked	1 week a year	2 weeks a year	12 days a year	3 weeks a year	4 weeks a year	5 weeks a year
40 h	0.77	1.54	1.85	2.31	3.08	3.85
80 h	1.54	3.08	3.69	4.62	6.15	7.69
160 h	3.08	6.15	7.38	9.23	12.31	15.38
260 h	5	10	12	15	20	25
520 h	10	20	24	30	40	50
1040 h	20	40	48	60	80	100
1560 h	30	60	72	90	120	150
2080 h(a full year)	40	80	96	120	160	200
Per hour worked	0.0192 h	0.0385 h	0.0462 h	0.0577 h	0.0769 h	0.0962 h

Figures are hours of PTO, built on a 2,080-hour full-time year (40 hours × 52 weeks). Illustrative benchmarks — the United States has no federal law requiring paid vacation, so the allowance itself comes from your employer, your contract, or in some places a state or local sick-leave rule.

Caps and rollover

The two ceilings, and why they are not the same

Almost every complaint about a PTO balance traces back to confusing these two. One stops hours arriving; the other removes hours already held. They can both exist in the same policy, and they behave completely differently across a year.

applies continuously

Accrual cap

A ceiling on the balance. Once reached, new accrual simply does not land, and it resumes the moment time is taken. Nothing you already hold is removed — but the hours that never arrived are gone.

100 h start, 120 h a year, 160 h cap → 180 h never accrued in two years

applies once a year

Rollover limit

A cut applied at the accrual-year boundary. Everything above the line at that instant does not cross into the new year, which is why the calendar around New Year fills with leave requests.

80 h a year with a 40 h limit → 40 h forfeited over two years

no ceiling at all

Unlimited accrual

Some policies let a balance grow without limit, which is generous but creates a large liability on the employer's books — one reason caps are common in the first place, and why an uncapped policy is often paired with a payout rule instead.

Whether an employer may forfeit an earned balance is a legal question with different answers in different places — several states treat accrued vacation as earned wages and limit or prohibit it. This page models the arithmetic your policy describes; it does not tell you whether that policy is lawful, and it is not legal or employment advice.

Hours or days

The unit your policy is written in

Employers track PTO in hours because hours are what payroll understands; people think in days because days are what a holiday is made of. The bridge between them is the length of your workday, and it is the single most common reason two people describing the same policy disagree about how much time it buys.

Balance	8-hour day	7.5-hour day	10-hour day	12-hour shift	Worth at $25.00/hr
8 h	1	1.07	0.8	0.67	$200.00
24 h	3	3.2	2.4	2	$600.00
40 h	5	5.33	4	3.33	$1,000.00
80 h	10	10.67	8	6.67	$2,000.00
120 h	15	16	12	10	$3,000.00
160 h	20	21.33	16	13.33	$4,000.00

Day counts are the balance divided by the workday length. The dollar column is illustrative — hours × an example $25.00 rate, before tax — and is not a statement that the amount would be paid out.

Worth knowing

Rules worth remembering

Six things that decide whether a projected balance survives contact with a real payroll system.

26 ≠ 24

Biweekly and semi-monthly are different

Two schedules that sound identical deposit different amounts at different times. Using the wrong one drifts by a few hours a year — small enough to go unnoticed and large enough to ruin a plan built around a specific date.

80 h a year is 3.08 h biweekly but 3.33 h semi-monthly

part time scales the rate

A per-hour basis is proportional

Where accrual follows hours worked, a shorter schedule earns proportionally less without any special part-time rule. Where the policy grants a flat amount per period, it may not scale at all.

24 h a week on the two-week rate earns 48 h a year, not 80

a cap is silent

Nobody tells you accrual stopped

A capped balance looks exactly like a healthy one on a payslip. The loss is invisible because it appears as hours that never arrived rather than hours removed, which is why it is worth projecting forward.

Two years at the cap in the example above quietly cost 180 h

the accrual year is not always January

Check when the year rolls over

Some policies reset on January 1, others on your hire anniversary, and a few on a fiscal year. The rollover limit bites on that date, so getting it wrong moves the deadline for spending a balance by months.

sick time is often separate

One bank or several

A combined PTO bank covers vacation and sick time together; separate buckets track them apart, often with different accrual rates and very different rules on carryover and payout. Project the bucket you are actually planning to spend.

a balance is not a guarantee

Approval is a separate question

Holding the hours and being allowed to take them on a particular week are different things. Blackout periods, notice requirements, and staffing rules sit outside the arithmetic entirely.

Common mistakes

Errors that move the answer

Four ways a PTO projection goes wrong, in rough order of how often we see them.

52 weeks treated as 52 paychecks

Counting weeks instead of pay periods

Accrual lands on pay dates, not on Mondays. Multiplying a per-paycheck rate by the number of weeks in the period doubles a biweekly policy and is the most common error of the lot.

3.08 h × 52 = 160 h — double the real 80 h

cap and rollover swapped

Applying the rollover limit continuously

A rollover limit cuts once a year; a cap applies every day. Treating the rollover number as a running ceiling understates the balance for eleven months out of twelve.

A 40 h limit read as a cap turns 120 h into 40 h

days and hours mixed

Entering days into an hours field

Policies are usually written in hours and discussed in days. The calculator above carries the unit on every field and converts the whole projection when you switch, so the two never end up mixed in the same sum.

10 typed where 80 was meant understates a two-week balance eightfold

leave subtracted at the end

Taking the time off after the maths

Subtracting planned leave from the final total instead of period by period changes the answer whenever a cap is involved, because time taken early frees up room for accrual that would otherwise have been lost.

Time taken along the way keeps a balance under a cap that it would otherwise hit

Glossary

The words your policy document uses

Eight terms that decide what a balance means. These are general descriptions of how PTO policies are usually written in the United States; the specifics are set by your employer and, in some places, by state or local law. Nothing here is legal or employment advice.

Accrual rate: The speed a balance grows, expressed per hour worked, per pay period, or per year. All three describe the same policy — a two-week annual grant is 80 hours a year, about 3.08 hours per biweekly period, or roughly 0.0385 hours for every hour worked on a standard full-time year.
Accrual cap: A ceiling on the balance itself. Once the cap is reached, accrual stops until time is taken and the balance falls back below it. A cap does not delete hours you already hold — it stops new ones from landing, which is why the projection here reports the accrual lost to the cap separately.
Carryover (rollover) limit: A ceiling applied once a year, at the accrual-year boundary. Anything above the limit at that moment does not cross into the new year. This is what people mean by 'use it or lose it', and some states restrict or prohibit forfeiting earned vacation — check the rule where you work.
Front-loaded grant: The whole year's allowance handed over on day one rather than accrued gradually. It is simpler to administer and better for the employee early in the year, and it usually comes with a clawback or pro-rating rule if employment ends mid-year.
Waiting period: A stretch at the start of employment during which time accrues but cannot be taken, or does not accrue at all. It changes the start date of the projection rather than the arithmetic, so set the start date to the day accrual actually begins.
Negative balance: Time taken before it has been earned, leaving the balance below zero. Some policies allow it against future accrual and some do not; this projection never lets the balance fall below zero, so it shows time off deferred rather than borrowed.
PTO bank vs separate buckets: A single combined bank covers vacation, sick, and personal time together; separate buckets track them apart, often with different accrual rates and different rules on payout. A combined bank makes the balance larger but the sick-leave protections can differ.
Payout on separation: Whether an unused balance is paid out when employment ends. It varies enormously by state and by policy — some states treat accrued vacation as earned wages that must be paid, others leave it to the employer. The dollar figure this page can show is illustrative only.

Where it shows up

When you need this number

A projected balance is almost always in front of a decision about a specific date.

planning a trip

Will I have enough by then?

The real question is never the annual allowance — it is whether the balance clears the length of the trip by the week you want to book it, which depends on where you are starting from.

Starting at zero, a two-week policy reaches 40 h around mid-year

beating a rollover deadline

How much will I lose in December?

Projecting to the accrual-year boundary tells you how many hours are at risk and how early they need to be booked, rather than discovering it in the last week of the year.

40 h forfeited over two years on a 40 h limit

valuing an offer

What is the allowance worth?

Converting an allowance into money makes two offers with different salaries and different leave comparable. An illustrative figure for comparison, not a payout you are owed.

80 h at $25.00/hr is about $2,000.00 of paid time

FAQ

Common questions

Pick the basis your policy is written on and multiply. Per hour worked: accrual rate × hours worked. Per pay period: accrual per period × number of periods. Annual grant: the whole allowance lands at once. Then add your current balance, subtract the time you take, and stop at the cap if there is one. A two-week policy is 80 hours a year, which is 80 ÷ 26 = 3.08 hours on every biweekly paycheck, or 80 ÷ 2,080 = 0.0385 hours for every hour worked.

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