Australia Annual Leave & Leave Loading Calculator

How Accrual Works

Under the National Employment Standards, an employee (other than a casual) is entitled to 4 weeks of paid annual leave for each year of service, or 5 weeks if a modern award or enterprise agreement defines them as a shiftworker, or, for an award/agreement-free employee, if they meet the s 87(3) test (regularly rostered on 24/7 continuous shifts and regularly working Sundays and public holidays) (Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) s 87(1)). Leave accrues progressively, according to the employee's ordinary hours of work, and accumulates from year to year rather than resetting (s 87(2)). Casual employees are excluded from this entitlement altogether (s 86).

Only periods that count as service accrue leave. Unpaid leave or unpaid authorised absence, such as unpaid parental leave (including time on the Australian Government's Paid Parental Leave Scheme while on unpaid leave from the employer, because that scheme is not treated as paid leave), unpaid personal leave, and unpaid annual leave, does not count as service, so no annual leave accrues during it (s 22(2)(b)). The calculator has a field for this; leave it at zero unless you had unpaid leave during the period you are pricing.

The mechanic is a simple proportion of an employee's own ordinary hours. The Fair Work Ombudsman's own worked example illustrates it directly: a part-time employee working 20 hours a week accumulates 80 hours of annual leave over a year, the equivalent of 4 weeks of her own work. The table below applies the same mechanic at a few common weekly hour figures.

This flat-rate mechanic is correct for a standard full-time or part-time employee working the same hours every week. It understates the detail for an averaged or rostered arrangement, such as a FIFO swing or a rotating roster. Fair Work Ombudsman guidance on averaging arrangements is explicit on two points: leave accrues only on ordinary hours actually worked, not on overtime worked under the averaging arrangement, and leave usage on a day off is based on the ordinary hours that specific day would have been, not a flat weekly average. If your hours are averaged or your roster varies, treat this calculator's balance as an estimate and confirm the exact figure against your own timesheet or payslip records.

Leave Loading Is Not an NES Entitlement

Leave loading, commonly 17.5%, is not part of the National Employment Standards. Section 16(1) of the Fair Work Act defines an employee's "base rate of pay", the rate paid during ordinary annual leave, to specifically exclude loadings, along with overtime, penalty rates, allowances, bonuses and incentive payments. If leave loading applies to you at all, it comes from a modern award, an enterprise agreement, or your employment contract, never from the Act itself.

Where it does apply, the mechanic is not always the same across awards. Three examples checked directly against the current award text:

• General Retail Industry Award 2020 [MA000004], cl 28.3: the greater of 17.5% of the minimum hourly rate, or the minimum hourly rate inclusive of the applicable penalty rates, whichever is more.
• Clerks–Private Sector Award 2020 [MA000002], cl 32.3: the same "greater of" structure, 17.5% versus the penalty-inclusive rate.
• Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020 [MA000009], cl 30.3: a flat 17.5%, with no comparison to penalty rates, and the clause spells out that it also applies "including a period of untaken paid annual leave when the employment of the employee ends".

This calculator applies your percentage to the base rate you enter. That matches a flat clause like the Hospitality Award's. Greater-of clauses like the Retail and Clerks awards work differently in two ways. The 17.5% is calculated on the award minimum hourly rate, not any above-award rate you are paid, so the calculator can overstate it if you earn above the award. And the penalty-rate comparison can make the real figure higher. Treat the loading line as an estimate and check your award.

Payout on Termination

When employment ends, an employer must pay out any untaken accrued annual leave at the rate the employee would have been paid had they taken it (Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) s 90(2)). The Fair Work Ombudsman is explicit that this includes leave loading if it applied during employment, and that the obligation holds "even if an award, registered agreement or employment contract says that they don't". In other words: whether loading applies to you at all depends entirely on your award, agreement or contract, but once it does apply, it cannot be carved out of a termination payout by contrary wording in that same instrument.

Cashing Out Leave

Annual leave can only be cashed out under a term in an applicable modern award or enterprise agreement, or, for an employee with neither, a separate written agreement with the employer each time (Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) ss 92-94). The Act itself sets one hard floor that applies in every case: cashing out must never take the employee's remaining accrued balance below 4 weeks (ss 93(2)(a), 94(2)).

The commonly quoted rule that an employee "can't cash out more than 2 weeks in any 12-month period" is not in the Fair Work Act itself. It is a term individual awards add on top of the Act's 4-week floor; the General Retail Industry Award, for example, states it explicitly at cl 28.9(h). An award or agreement could in principle set a different cap, or no cap at all, subject always to the 4-week floor. Check your own award or agreement rather than assuming the 2-week figure applies to you.

This tool applies the published Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) annual leave rules, current as of 26 September 2026. It is an estimate only, does not access any record of your employment, does not file anything, and is not legal advice. RecordingLaw.com is not a law firm and is not affiliated with the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Ombudsman, or any Australian government body. It applies to national system employees covered by the Fair Work Act; some Western Australian employees of sole traders, partnerships and non-corporate employers are covered by the WA state system instead. See annual leave in Australia for the full explainer, and final pay in Australia for how leave payout fits into a final pay more generally.