Daily PTO Accrual on a Leap Year

Leap year happens once every four years when the month of February gets an extra day (the 29th), resulting in a total of 366 days in the year. One unique impact this can have is related to PTO accruals in Virtual TimeClock. This article will explain how Virtual TimeClock accommodates for leap year with time off accrual calculations.

Note: This article only applies to PTO awards that are set to the Daily Award frequency.

Leap Year & PTO Accrual
Virtual TimeClock always calculates Daily Award accruals based on 365 days, even on a leap year. This means that when February 29th rolls around on a leap year, that day is excluded from the calculation. If you check the accrued hours on February 28th and the 29th, they will be the same.

This allows employers to maintain the same accrual rate whether it's a leap year or not. If an employee usually receives 0.219 leave hours a day, and you change the accrual math for leap years, the accrual rate would change to 0.218 for the whole year just because of one day. To keep accruals rates static and avoid employee confusion, daily accruals are always based on 365 days.

Remember, the goal of a daily accrual rate is so that employees end up with the set Hours Per Year by the end of the anniversary year. This remains true even on leap years; employees will still end up with their total awarded hours by the end of the anniversary year.