Annual Leave Calculator Australia

How annual leave works under the NES

Paid annual leave is one of the entitlements in the National Employment Standards (NES), which apply to all employees covered by Australia's national workplace relations system. Full-time and part-time employees are entitled to 4 weeks of paid annual leave for each year of service. Certain shift workers, broadly, those who work a roster of continuous shifts (including weekends and public holidays) as defined by their award or agreement, are entitled to 5 weeks. Casual employees do not accrue paid annual leave.

How annual leave accrues (the formula)

Annual leave accrues progressively during the year, based on the number of ordinary hours you work. It is not paid all at once at the start of the year, it builds up week by week and any leave you don't use rolls over into the next year. The accrual rate is:

• Per week worked: ordinary hours per week × 4 ÷ 52 (or × 5 ÷ 52 for shift workers)
• Total accrued: ordinary hours per week × (4 ÷ 52) × weeks worked
• Balance: total accrued − annual leave already taken

Worked example. A full-time employee works 38 ordinary hours a week. Each week they accrue 38 × 4 ÷ 52 ≈ 2.923 hours of leave. Over a full 52-week year that is 152 hours, which equals 4 weeks (38 × 4) or 20 working days. If they have taken 40 hours of leave, their balance is 152 − 40 = 112 hours (about 14.7 days).

Pro-rata accrual for part-time employees

Because accrual is based on ordinary hours, part-time staff accrue automatically on a pro-rata basis. Someone on 20 ordinary hours a week accrues 20 × 4 ÷ 52 ≈ 1.538 hours per week, totalling about 80 hours (4 weeks of their normal hours) across a full year. Just enter your real ordinary hours per week above.

When leave is paid out

Annual leave continues to accrue while you are on paid annual leave or paid personal/carer's leave. When your employment ends, any accrued but unused annual leave must be paid out in your final pay, calculated on your accrued hours at your applicable rate (plus leave loading where your award or agreement provides it).

The other leave that accrues in the background

Annual leave is the entitlement that shows up every year; long service leave is the one that quietly builds for a decade and then lands as a large liability, under a different Act in every state and territory. The long service leave calculator works out where an employee sits against their state's qualifying period and accrual rate. If you would rather these balances came off real rostered hours than off a spreadsheet somebody updates by hand, that is what the rostering app does with the timesheets it already holds.