PTO / Vacation Workday Counter
Leave days a booking really costs — half-days, holidays and shutdowns excluded.
Written and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Rules last verified
These calculators are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice.
How the PTO / Vacation Workday Counter works
The PTO / Vacation Workday Counter answers what a leave request actually costs the balance. Enter the first and last day away and it counts only the days the employee would otherwise have worked — weekends drop out, public holidays for your selected country drop out, and any company closure you add as a custom date drops out too, because none of those were days the employee was going to work.
Half-days are handled directly rather than left to hand-arithmetic. Enter how many of the days in the range were half-days and each one is charged at 0.5 instead of 1, so a fortnight with two half-days costs seven days rather than eight. This matters because the half-day is the single most common reason a leave figure computed by hand disagrees with the one in the HR system. Enter your current balance as well, optionally, and the calculator reports what the booking leaves behind — which is usually the number the employee actually wants before pressing submit.
Two boundaries are worth naming. The count treats both the first and last day as days away, which is right for leave and the opposite of the convention you would use for a notice period or a gap between two events; that is deliberate, because a leave request is a span of consumed days rather than a measurement between two boundaries. And the calculator has no view of accrual: it tells you what a given absence costs and, if you supply a balance, what remains after it, but it does not know your accrual rate, carryover cap or year-end forfeiture rules. Take the cost from here and apply those rules yourself.
Worked example
An employee is away from Monday, 21 December 2026 through Friday, 1 January 2027 — twelve calendar days on the wall. Two weekends remove four of them. Christmas Day and New Year’s Day are public holidays inside the window and are not charged. That leaves eight working days. Mark two of them as half-days and the booking costs seven. Add the company shutdown from 28 to 31 December as custom closures and the same twelve-day absence costs three days of leave. Enter a balance of 18 and the result shows 15 remaining — the number worth checking before the request goes in.
Frequently asked questions
How are half-days counted?
Each half-day you declare converts one full working day in the range into a 0.5 charge, so the deduction falls by half a day for each one. The calculator does not need to know which specific days were halves, only how many, because the arithmetic is the same either way. If you declare more half-days than there are working days in the range, it caps them at the number available rather than producing a negative charge.
Why is a public holiday inside my leave not deducted?
Because the employee was not going to work that day regardless of the leave request, so charging it to the balance would take a day the employee never spent. This is standard practice in most jurisdictions and is the main reason a Christmas-period booking costs so much less than its calendar length suggests. Make sure the country selection matches the holiday calendar the employee actually works to — the tool preselects one from your browser time zone, which may not be theirs.
Does it know my accrual rate or carryover cap?
No. It computes what one absence costs and, when you supply a balance, what that leaves. It has no view of how quickly leave accrues, what carries over at year end, or what is forfeited — those are policy questions specific to your employer. Use the cost figure as the input to those rules rather than expecting the tool to apply them.
What this calculator does not do
A limitation you know about costs far less than one you find after the deadline. These are the specific things this tool cannot work out for you.
- It calculates the leave days a booking consumes, netting off weekends, public holidays and half-days. It does not know your balance unless you enter it, and it does not apply accrual.
- Employers differ on whether a public holiday inside a leave period is deducted from the balance. This tool does not deduct it.