Find Out How Much PTO You Have and When You Have Enough
How This PTO Calculator Works
MOST US employers do not hand you a full year of paid time off on day one. Balance grows a little at every paycheck, and the balance you can book a trip against is the product of four numbers: the annual allowance, the pay schedule, the date the accrual window opened, and whatever the policy lets you carry over or cap. This calculator walks the actual pay calendar, payday by payday, from your start date to the date you name, so the projection lands on the same number your pay stub will show.
A few inputs swing the answer more than anything else. A 160-hour annual grant on a semi-monthly schedule is 6.67 hours every payday, 15 days at a 9-hour workday is 135 hours a year, and a one-hour-per-30-worked rule on an 80-hour paycheck comes to 2.67. Caps and carry-over limits do the rest: with no cap the balance climbs until the year ends and the limit resets it, and with a low cap you can watch hours pile up as hours the policy never let you keep.
Why AI Chatbots Cannot Replace This Tool
Counting paydays is the part that breaks people. Semi-monthly schedules pay on the 15th and the last day of the month, so the distance between two dates in paychecks is not a formula you can run in your head, and being off by one payday is the classic discrepancy payroll hears about, worth about 4.6 hours on a typical biweekly grant. This tool walks the calendar for you and shows the paydays, so the number on the screen is reproducible instead of a vibe.
How to Use It
- Pick the pay schedule and tell the tool how PTO accrues: annual hours, annual days at your workday length, a fixed number printed on the stub, or hours earned per hour worked.
- Set the accrual period start. Align it with a real payday; weekly and biweekly projections step 7 or 14 days from it, semi-monthly ones land on the 15th and month end.
- Enter carry-over and the used hours, then name the date you care about. The panel reports the balance today, the balance on the future date, the hours the cap swallowed and the hours the year-end limit will forfeit.
- Set a trip budget in hours to find the first payday you clear it, or an hourly rate to estimate a termination payout.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I figure out my PTO accrual rate?
Take the annual allowance in your offer letter or handbook and divide it by the number of paychecks a year. 15 days at 8 hours on a biweekly schedule is 120 hours divided by 26 paychecks, or about 4.6 hours per paycheck. Weekly runs 52 periods, biweekly 26, semi-monthly 24, monthly 12. If your pay stub already prints an hourly accrual, use the hours-per-period mode instead.
How much PTO do I have right now?
Add your carry-over to any set-up hours your company granted, add one accrual chunk for every payday that has come and gone since the accrual start date, and subtract everything you already used. A balance printed on a pay stub is more reliable than a mental model, so enter it as the starting balance and set the accrual start date to the day that stub belongs to.
What happens when I hit the accrual cap?
Your balance stops at the cap and every hour after that is simply never credited. Those hours do not come back when you take a vacation, so the tool counts them separately as hours not earned because of the cap. A mid-cap vacation frees room and accrual resumes at the next paycheck.
What is a use-it-or-lose-it carry-over limit?
At the end of the PTO year, any balance above your carry-over limit disappears. California bans forfeiting earned vacation outright though it allows a reasonable accrual cap instead, and ten listed states require paying out accrued vacation at separation. Check your handbook before counting on hours rolling over.
Do employers have to pay out unused PTO when I quit?
Federal law does not require it. Ten states treat accrued vacation as wages and do require payout: California, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and Rhode Island. Where a payout applies it is unused hours times your final hourly rate, and those wages land as supplemental income for tax purposes.
How accurate is this PTO calculator?
The arithmetic is exact for the policy you describe. The assumption to check is the pay calendar itself: weekly and biweekly projections step 7 or 14 days from the date you enter as the period start, and semi-monthly pay dates land on the 15th and the last day of each month. Align the start date with a real payday and the projection matches your stub.
Why can an AI chatbot not do this math?
A chatbot has no calendar. It does not know how many semi-monthly pay dates fell between your hire date and the day you ask about, it cannot step through paydays holding a balance against a moving cap, and it cannot stop mid-projection at the year boundary to subtract a carry-over limit. This tool iterates the real pay calendar and shows the same sequence every time.
Does this tool store my salary or balance?
No. Everything runs in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved. Close the tab and the numbers are gone.
State payout list covers the ten states widely cited as requiring payout of accrued vacation (CA, CO, IL, LA, ME, MA, MT, NE, ND, RI). Company policy can be more generous; this tool computes a projection, not legal advice.
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