Vacation Days Planner

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 (what this calculator computes): Annual allowance: 15 days. Used so far: 6. Planned trips: 3. Current month: July.

Days remaining = 15 − 6 − 3 = 6 days Months left in the year: 5, so the even-spend guide is 6 ÷ 5 ≈ 1.2 days per month

If your employer accrues PTO per pay period instead of granting it all on January 1, your available balance mid-year is smaller than the annual figure. Biweekly pay (26 periods/year), currently in period 18: accrued = (18 ÷ 26) × 15 = 10.38 days earned so far. Check your payslip; the accrued figure is the one you can actually book against.

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.