Accrual per pay period is your annual PTO hours divided by the number of pay periods in a year.
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A PTO accrual calculator turns your annual paid time off allowance into two numbers that actually matter day to day: how much time you earn each pay period, and how much you have banked right now after accounting for what you have already used. Most PTO plans do not hand over a full year's allowance on day one; instead, hours build up gradually as pay periods pass, which is why your real balance is rarely the same as your stated annual allowance.
The core calculation is simple: annual PTO hours divided by the number of pay periods in the year gives you the accrual rate per period. Annual PTO hours is your allowance in days multiplied by your standard hours per work day, commonly 8. A 15 day allowance on an 8 hour day is 120 hours a year; split across 26 biweekly pay periods, that comes to roughly 4.6 hours accrued every payday. Multiply that per-period rate by however many pay periods have already passed to get your total accrued hours to date, then add any carryover from last year and subtract hours you have already used to land on your current balance.
The same annual allowance produces a different per-period accrual depending on how often you get paid. Weekly pay (52 periods) spreads accrual thinner but more often, while monthly pay (12 periods) accrues in larger, less frequent chunks. Biweekly (26 periods) and semi-monthly (24 periods) sit in between and are easy to mix up since they both pay roughly twice a month, but 26 periods a year is not the same as 24, and the small difference compounds over a full year. Using the exact schedule your employer runs on matters more than it looks like it should.
Whether unused PTO rolls over, gets capped, or disappears at year end depends entirely on your employer's policy and, in some US states, on local law that restricts forfeiture. Once you know your real-time balance from this calculator, check it against your employer's rollover cap or "use it or lose it" deadline so you are not caught planning a trip around hours that are about to expire. If you manage PTO policy for a team rather than tracking your own balance, pairing a clear accrual policy with predictable, well-documented time-off requests reduces scheduling conflicts and payroll disputes alike.
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