Calculate Future Time Off Balances

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How do I calculate future time off balances?

Purpose: Do you plan your time off in advance? It can be hard to manually calculate your accruals ahead of time to see if you will have enough time for your vacation. This help guide will show you how to use the accrual calculator within BambooHR so you can easily see what your balance will be at a future date.

Table of Contents

Accrual calculator

Screenshot of the Time Off tab on an employee profile showing multiple time off category cards, each with an available balance displayed. One card shows a Calculate Balance calculator icon. This demonstrates how employees can access the accrual calculator directly from any time off category card to project future balances.

To calculate a future balance, click on the accrual calculator in the Time Off widget on Home, or go to the Time Off tab under My Info (see below).

Screenshot of the Calculate Time Off window showing dropdown menus to select a time off category and a future date field. This demonstrates how users configure the calculator to project balances for a specific time off category as of a chosen date.

The accrual calculator allows you to project a future time off balance for a specific time off category. You can access the calculator when hovering over a time off category and clicking the calculator (Calculate Balance) icon. Note that the icon is only available for a time off category with a policy that has automatic accruals. Accrual options set as None do not have the calculator icon.

In the mobile app, the calculator icon is in the top-right corner of the Check Balances screen. For detailed information about the calculator feature in our mobile app, click here.

Calculate Time Off

Screenshot of the Calculate Time Off window showing a projected balance of hours for a selected time off category as of a future date, with a table below listing accrual adjustments, policy changes, and time off usage. This demonstrates how the system projects future balances while also showing the calculation breakdown for transparency.

When you click Calculate Balance, the accrual calculator will appear. On this page, you can select the time off category you would like to review (this defaults to the same category you hovered over to access the accrual calculator) and enter a future date to give you the projected time off balance you will have accrued by that day.

Click Accrual Details, and the accrual calculator shows all applicable time off actions from an earlier date to a projected future date.  In the above screenshot, you can see accruals, milestone changes, time off used, and most importantly, that the Vacation balance will be 825.7 hours on 8/18/2022.