Vacation Days Planner
Plan PTO from annual allowance, days used, and planned trips.
Returns remaining balance, monthly accrual rate, and a guide to use days evenly across the year.
Keeping track of your vacation days — how many you’ve earned, how many you’ve used, and how many you have left — prevents the unwelcome surprise of reaching December with zero PTO remaining, or losing days you forgot to take.
Formula: Days Remaining = Days Accrued − Days Used
For accrual-based PTO: Days Accrued = (Days Worked ÷ Total Working Days in Year) × Annual PTO Allowance
Or, if you accrue by pay period: Days Accrued = Pay Periods Completed × Accrual Rate per Period
What each variable means:
- Annual PTO Allowance: your total entitled vacation days per year (typically 10–25 days depending on employer and seniority).
- Accrual Rate: for biweekly (26 pay periods) with 15 days/year: 15 ÷ 26 = 0.577 days per pay period.
- Days Used: all full and partial days taken as vacation, personal days, or floating holidays (check whether sick days are separate or pooled with PTO).
Worked example: Annual allowance: 15 days. Biweekly pay (26 periods/year). Currently in pay period 18.
Days accrued = (18 ÷ 26) × 15 = 0.6923 × 15 = 10.38 days earned Days used so far: 6 days Days remaining = 10.38 − 6 = 4.38 days available
U.S. average PTO by years of service:
- 0–1 year: 10 days
- 1–5 years: 14 days
- 5–10 years: 17 days
- 10+ years: 20+ days
Planning tip: Reserve at least 2–3 days of buffer for unexpected personal needs. Don’t let days expire — unused PTO is real money lost if your employer doesn’t pay it out.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
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