Holiday pay calculator

Holiday calculator

Enter the details below to calculate how many holiday days are available and how much pay for those days.

Holiday accrual and payment calculator

Holiday year start Date to calculate from Maximum holiday for the year. Wks     Days  4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Days worked per week one two three four five six seven Work days holiday already taken Basic or an averaged weeks pay Date to calculate to Include Bank Holidays Holiday days requested   Calculate  »

Calculation results Total holiday accrued over the period Holiday accrued in Days Holiday accrued in Weeks Holiday accrued in Weeks : Days : Untaken holidays available Holiday available in Days Holiday available in Weeks Holiday available in Weeks : Days : Holiday pay Total accrued holiday pay Days available holiday pay Days requested holiday pay

How to use the calculator

The idea of the calculator is to give you as good an idea as possible of the number of days and holiday pay that has accrued and that is available. To get it as accurate as possible there are a number of details that are needed:

• Either holiday year start date or employee start date
• Number of paid weeks & days holiday (defaulted at statutory minimum)
• Days worked per week (defaulted at 5)
• Days holiday already taken
• Average weeks pay
• Date to calculate to

If any of these are missing an error message will be displayed

'Max weeks holiday per year' should only be the number of weeks of either contracted or statutory holidays, it should not include the 1.6 weeks (8 days based on a five day or more working week, fully implemented from April 2009) introduced in Oct 2007 to cover unpaid bank holidays. These bank holidays days are included in the calculation automatically if the 'Include Bank Holidays' boxed is checked. The box should not be checked if the extra days are not applicable. Check out 'Holidays' in 'Related pages' to see if applicable.

Once all the information has been entered just click 'Calculate' and days and pay will be displayed, update one piece of information and click 'Calculate' again to re-display new totals.

The calculator result is based upon the number of days the employee works during a week. If a person works 3 days then 1 weeks holiday equals three days, the other non working days making up the actual one weeks holiday. Without this information the calculator would not be able to translate the odd day taken here and there into parts of a holiday week. If an employee's normal number of work days for a week changes then you must calculate each period separately.

The calculator will not take into account any holidays not taken from a previous holiday year, although that can be calculated separately and the two amounts added together.

Holiday entitlement and pay explained

Holidays accrue month by month from either the start of the company holiday year or from the first day of employment, which ever is the later, until the end of the company holiday year.

The amount accrued depends upon the total amount of holidays allowed over the holiday year, the statutory minimum currently is four weeks, plus 8 bank holidays if these are unpaid when not worked or paid at the normal daily rate if worked. On four weeks holidays per year the monthly accrued amount is 1.6667ish days based upon a five day working week or 0.3334ish of a week. When calculating the accrued amount in days it is important to take into the calculation the number of working days in a normal week, if you don't you could have a person accruing 1.6667 days a month when they only work one day a week, this would give them roughly three months holiday a year, nice.

As there is no statutory right to carry over an entitlement from one holiday year to the next, the accrued holidays for each month must be made available from the 1st of that month, otherwise, if left until the end of the month, the accrued holiday in the last month of the holiday year would be unavailable and therefore lost and you, as the employer, would be breaking the law.

A weeks pay is the average of the previous twelve weeks pay. If the weekly pay never changes then it is a simple weeks pay, if on the other hand it varies from week to week with overtime, bonus etc etc then an average must be calculated. Unless commission and bonuses are the main constituent of the pay they should, in general, be left out when calculating the average, however, as there is no definition of 'main constituent' you could leave yourself open to making an unlawful deduction from wages if it is left out or incorrectly calculated. Have in mind when leaving out commissions that the National Minimum Wage rates still apply.

Once you have worked out the weeks pay it is just a simple matter of dividing by the number of days normally worked and then multiplying it by the holiday days being taken.

That's it, you can do it the long way, but using our calculator is much simpler.