Leave Days Calculator South Africa
Calculate your annual leave entitlement, accrued balance and rand value under BCEA Section 20. Updated for 2026, based on current South African labour law.
Under Section 20 of the BCEA, every employee who works 24 hours or more a month for their employer gets 21 consecutive days of annual leave per leave cycle, 15 working days on a 5-day week. By agreement it can accrue at 1 day for every 17 days worked. On termination, accrued unused leave must be paid out at your daily rate (for the current cycle, only after more than four months' employment).
| Leave type | Minimum entitlement | How it accrues |
|---|---|---|
| Annual leave | 21 consecutive days (15 working days on a 5-day week) | 1 day per 17 days worked (if agreed) |
| Sick leave | 30 days per 3-year cycle (6 weeks) | 1 day per 26 days worked in the first 6 months, then the full cycle |
| Family responsibility | 3 days per year | After 4 months' service (4+ days a week): your child's illness or a listed family death (Section 27(2)) |
This calculator shows exactly how many leave days you're entitled to under the BCEA, how many you've accrued in your current cycle, your remaining balance and what that balance is worth in rand. It's useful whether you're planning time off or working out a payout on termination.
Enter your details
Enter your salary and work details above to calculate your leave entitlement and balance.
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How to Use This Calculator
Select your work pattern and enter salary
Choose 5-day or 6-day week and enter your monthly gross salary. Work pattern determines whether your entitlement is 15 or 18 working days per year.
Confirm your contract leave and cycle progress
Enter your contract's leave days per year (the BCEA minimum is pre-filled) and how many months you've completed in your current 12-month leave cycle.
Enter leave taken, carried over and unpaid days
Add any leave days already taken this cycle, any unused days carried over from the last cycle and, if you took unpaid leave, the unpaid working days.
Accrual and balance are calculated
The calculator spreads your yearly entitlement evenly: 1.25 days a month for 15 days (5-day week) or 1.5 for 18 days (6-day week). Your remaining balance is accrued days, less any unpaid-leave reduction, plus carryover, minus days taken.
Leave payout value is calculated
Payout = daily rate × remaining leave balance, where the daily rate is monthly salary × 12 ÷ 260 (about 21.67 working days a month) on a 5-day week, or monthly salary ÷ 26 on a 6-day week.
How annual leave works in South Africa
Annual leave in South Africa is governed by Section 20 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA). Every employee who works 24 hours or more a month for the same employer is entitled to paid annual leave (Section 19(1)). Unlike the working-hours rules, the leave chapter has no exclusion for senior managers or for earnings above the BCEA threshold. The BCEA sets the minimum entitlement; your employment contract or collective agreement may provide for more, but never less.
A common source of confusion is the difference between consecutive days and working days. The BCEA states the entitlement as 21 consecutive calendar days, not 21 working days. For a 5-day week employee, 21 consecutive days includes 6 weekend days, leaving 15 actual working days of paid leave. For a 6-day week employee, 21 consecutive days includes 3 Sundays, giving 18 working days of paid leave.
Annual leave entitlement by work pattern
| Work pattern | Consecutive days (BCEA) | Working days | Monthly accrual (if agreed) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 days/week (Mon–Fri) | 21 days | 15 working days | about 1.27 days/month |
| 6 days/week (Mon–Sat) | 21 days | 18 working days | about 1.53 days/month |
How annual leave accrues
The Act does not require leave to be available upfront at the start of a leave cycle. Section 20(3) speaks of leave "accumulated" in a cycle, and Section 20(4) gives the employer until 6 months after the cycle ends to grant it. The statutory default is 21 consecutive days per cycle (Section 20(2)(a)). Where leave accrues by agreement (Section 20(2)(b)), it builds up progressively throughout the 12-month cycle, starting at zero, at the rate of 1 day for every 17 days on which you worked or were entitled to be paid, which for a 5-day week employee works out to about 1.27 days per month (21.67 working days ÷ 17).
This calculator spreads your yearly entitlement evenly through the cycle (entitlement ÷ 12, so 1.25 days a month for a 15-day entitlement), which sits just under the 1-in-17 rate: over a full cycle the two methods differ by about 0.3 of a day.
On the even-spread method, a 5-day week employee who has completed 6 months of their leave cycle has accrued 7.5 days of leave (6 × 1.25), or about 7.6 days at 1 in 17, regardless of how many days they may have been granted upfront by their employer.
Step-by-step leave accrual example
An employee earns R18,000 per month, works a 5-day week, is entitled to 15 days per year, has completed 8 months of their current cycle and has taken 5 days already.
| Item | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Annual entitlement | 21 consecutive days = 5 days/week × 3 weeks | 15 working days |
| Monthly accrual | 15 ÷ 12 | 1.25 days/month |
| Accrued to date | 1.25 × 8 months | 10 days |
| Leave taken | N/A | 5 days |
| Remaining balance | 10 − 5 | 5 days |
| Daily rate | R18,000 × 12 ÷ 260 | R830.77 |
| Leave balance value | 5 × R830.77 | R4,153.85 |
Leave payout on termination
When employment ends, whether through resignation, retrenchment or dismissal, your employer must pay out any outstanding leave balance. This is governed by Section 40 of the BCEA. The payout is calculated at your normal daily rate of remuneration and is taxed as an annual payment, calculated the way a bonus is, and not under the lump sum tax table.
Section 40(b) covers leave from a completed cycle that you have not taken, paid at your normal rate of remuneration (Section 21(1)). Section 40(c) covers the incomplete cycle you are in when you leave: 1 day's remuneration for every 17 days on which you worked or were entitled to be paid (or any basis at least as favourable to you), and only if you have been employed for longer than four months. This calculator shows a leave value for any number of months completed, including 1 to 4, so if you have been employed for four months or fewer, the current-cycle part of that figure is not owed under the Act.
Importantly, you cannot agree to forfeit your leave payout. Section 40 creates a mandatory obligation on the employer; no contract clause can override it.
Unpaid leave (LWOP) and your leave balance
The BCEA does not give you a right to unpaid leave. Its one rule on the subject is Section 20(6): if you ask in writing, your employer must let you take annual leave during a period of unpaid leave. The Act does not spell out how unpaid leave affects annual leave, and we found no reported Labour Court or CCMA ruling on it. On the Act's wording, agreed unpaid leave does not by itself shorten your 12-month leave cycle or cut the 21 consecutive days. Where leave accrues by agreement at 1 day for every 17 days worked (or 1 hour for every 17 hours), only days you worked or were entitled to be paid count, so days of unpaid leave add nothing to accrual: on a 5-day week, 17 unpaid working days means about one day less accrued.
Some employers' policies reduce accrual by a set amount for each block of continuous unpaid days, which is a contract or policy term, so check yours.
To reflect this, enter your unpaid working days in the calculator's optional "Unpaid leave days this cycle" field: it subtracts unpaid days ÷ 17 from your accrual and shows the reduction as its own line. If your policy cuts more than that, add the extra days to "Leave days already taken this cycle". See the leave entitlement guide for the full rules, including how hourly-paid workers accrue leave.
Can you take leave before it has accrued?
Many employers grant employees their full annual leave entitlement at the start of the cycle, before it has technically accrued. This is permitted under the BCEA but creates a risk for the employer: if the employee then resigns before the leave has been earned, the employer may find themselves unable to recover the advance leave as a debt.
Employees should check their employment contracts to understand whether their employer operates on an advance-grant or a pro-rata accrual basis, as this affects how much leave is available at any point in the year.
Other leave types under the BCEA
The BCEA also provides for the following leave types which run separately from annual leave:
| Leave type | Entitlement (5-day week) | Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Annual leave | 15 working days | 12 months |
| Sick leave | 30 days | 36 months |
| Family responsibility | 3 days | 12 months |
| Maternity and parental leave (shared) | 4 months + 10 days between two employed parents (full amount if a single parent) | Per event |
Only annual leave gets cashed out. Unused sick leave, family responsibility leave and parental leave simply lapse at the end of their cycle, or on resignation: your employer does not owe you anything for them, and this calculator's payout figure only ever covers your annual leave balance. Don't assume a large unused sick-leave balance adds to your final payslip; it won't.
Maternity, parental and family responsibility leave: how they differ from annual leave
Maternity leave, parental leave and family responsibility leave are all separate entitlements under the BCEA, and none of them draw down your annual leave balance. Since the Constitutional Court's ruling in Van Wyk and Others v Minister of Employment and Labour [2025] ZACC 20 (3 October 2025), two employed parents are collectively entitled to 4 months and 10 days of parental leave, to divide between themselves as they choose; a single parent gets the full 4 months and 10 days. The leave is unpaid by the employer unless your contract says otherwise, and how UIF benefits apply to the shared structure is still unresolved, so see our Maternity & Parental Leave guide. Family responsibility leave gives 3 days a year, once you have worked for the employer for more than four months and at least four days a week, for your child's illness or the death of a spouse or life partner, parent, adoptive parent, grandparent, child, adopted child, grandchild or sibling (Section 27(2)), paid at your normal rate and reset every 12-month cycle.
Because these leave types are separate from annual leave, taking maternity or parental leave does not draw down the annual leave you have already accrued. The Act does not spell out whether it delays your next annual leave cycle or how it affects accrual going forward, so check your contract or leave policy. If an employer deducts maternity or parental leave from your annual leave balance, that's not compliant with the BCEA; raise it with the Department of Employment and Labour.
Public holidays and annual leave: how they interact
If a public holiday falls during your annual leave on a day you would ordinarily have worked, the BCEA is clear (Section 20(8)): you get an additional day of paid leave, so that day does not count against your annual leave balance. For example, if you take a week of leave that includes a Monday public holiday, only 4 of your leave days are deducted, not 5: your employer must credit the public holiday back to your leave balance (or, if using calendar-day leave counting, simply not deduct it in the first place). This is a common source of payroll disputes, so it's worth checking your leave balance after any period that included a public holiday.
South Africa observes 12 public holidays each year, and none of them are deducted from an employee's annual leave entitlement; they are separate, paid days off in addition to the statutory minimum leave.
Leave during notice period or retrenchment
Under BCEA Section 20(5)(b), an employer may not require, or even permit, an employee to take annual leave during their notice period, and the Act states no exception. If you're serving notice, you work it. In practice, some employers do agree to leave during notice when the employee asks for it in writing, typically for a handover; that is not something the Act allows, and it is not a right on either side. Your employer cannot decide on its own to run down your leave balance to shorten your notice period. On termination of employment for any reason (resignation, dismissal or retrenchment), the BCEA requires that accrued, untaken annual leave from your current and immediately preceding cycle be paid out as part of the final settlement (for a partly completed cycle, only once you have been employed for longer than four months), calculated at your normal daily rate of pay at the time employment ends. This leave payout is separate from any severance pay owed on retrenchment and from notice pay.