PTO accrual is division, and the reason people search for a calculator is not the division but the three decisions around it: which payroll cycle to divide by, what to do with a partial period, and how a carryover cap interacts with the running balance. This page works through each, including the hours to days conversion that trips up most part time calculations, and points at the free paid time off calculator on this site, which takes your entitlement and returns the per period rate, the accrued balance at a date, and the effect of a cap.
The rate: divide by pay periods, not by months
Accrual per pay period is the annual entitlement divided by the number of pay periods in the year: 52 weekly, 26 biweekly, 24 semimonthly, 12 monthly. Dividing by twelve when you pay biweekly is the single most common error, and it is not a rounding difference: biweekly has twenty six periods, so a monthly rate applied biweekly over accrues by roughly half again. Semimonthly and biweekly are also not the same thing, twenty four against twenty six, and a policy that says twice a month means the first.
Accrued to date, and the partial period
Accrued to date is the rate multiplied by the number of complete pay periods since accrual started, plus whatever your policy says about the period in progress. Most small employers credit the full period at its end and nothing before, which is the simplest rule to run and the easiest to explain. If instead you accrue daily within a period, say so in the policy, because the two produce different balances on any date that is not a period boundary and the difference is what an employee will notice.
Hours to days, and where part time breaks
Converting PTO hours to days means dividing by the standard working day, and the mistake is using eight for everyone. For an employee whose standard day is six hours, one hundred hours of PTO is not twelve and a half days, and if you track in days at a company where days differ, the balances will drift. The safe rule is to hold the balance in hours wherever any part of the team is part time or hourly, and convert to days only for display, using each person's own standard day.
What a carryover cap does
A cap can mean two quite different things and the difference is worth settling. A carryover cap limits what crosses the year boundary and lets accrual continue as normal during the year. An accrual cap stops accrual once the balance reaches a ceiling, which means an employee who does not take time off stops earning it. The first is far more common in small companies and is what this site's calculator applies. Whichever yours is, write it in the policy in those words, since the two produce different balances by autumn.
Questions people ask about pto accrual calculator
How do I calculate PTO accrual per pay period?
Annual entitlement divided by the number of pay periods in your year: 52 weekly, 26 biweekly, 24 semimonthly, 12 monthly. The free calculator on this site does this and applies it to a date.
How many days is 100 hours of PTO?
It depends on the standard working day for that employee. At an eight hour day it is twelve and a half; at a six hour day it is more than sixteen. Convert with each person's own standard day, which is why balances are safer held in hours.
Is accrued PTO the same as available PTO?
Not if anything is booked. Available is accrued plus carryover, minus taken, minus approved but not yet taken. A balance that ignores booked days will let people book time they do not have.
Does this calculator store my figures?
No. It works entirely on the page from what you enter and keeps nothing. Holding employees, requests and balances between visits is what the paid subscription does.