Guides
Paid leave, for people who have to get it right
Long-form guides on the questions that don't fit in a table — every one sourced to primary law, dated, and honest about where the law is unsettled.
Cluster
Leave policy & payroll
Leave tracking
How to Calculate a PTO Payout at Termination
A PTO payout is the employee's unused, accrued hours multiplied by their final rate of pay, paid with the last wages, taxed as supplemental income. The formula for hourly and salaried staff, worked examples, what to do about caps, advances and partial periods, and where the state rules bite.
Read →Leave tracking
How to Write a PTO Accrual Policy (Template and the Math)
A PTO accrual policy has to answer six questions — how much, how fast, from when, up to what cap, what carries over and what is paid at exit — and the answers have to respect the statutory floor in every country and state where you employ people. The methods, the formulas, the traps, and a clause you can adapt.
Read →Leave tracking
PTO Carryover Rules by Country and US State (+ Template)
Whether unused leave rolls into the next year is decided by law in Europe and Australia and mostly by your written policy in the United States — except in the states that ban forfeiture outright. The rules, country by country, and a carryover clause you can adapt.
Read →Leave tracking
Use-It-or-Lose-It PTO Policy: Where It's Legal
A use-it-or-lose-it PTO policy is enforceable in most US states if it is written and communicated in advance, and unlawful in the states that treat earned vacation as wages. Which states ban it, what to use instead, and a clause that survives an audit.
Read →Leave tracking
Public Holidays and Annual Leave, Country by Country
Whether a public holiday is a paid day off, whether it comes on top of annual leave or inside it, what happens when it lands on a weekend or during someone's holiday, and how many there are — none of this is the same in any two countries. The rules for the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Australia and Japan, and how to build a holiday calendar per location.
Read →Leave tracking
Unlimited PTO: What It Means and Where It Fails
Unlimited PTO removes the balance, not the obligations. In Europe and Australia the statutory minimum still has to be granted, tracked and paid at exit; in the US a policy that is 'unlimited' on paper but limited in practice can still owe vacation pay, as a California court found. What unlimited actually means, where it breaks, and how to run it so it survives an exit or an inspection.
Read →Cluster
Choosing tools
Cluster
Remote & multi-country teams
Cross-border hiring
Contractors vs Employees: Who Gets Paid Leave in the EU?
Employees get at least four weeks of paid leave across the EU; genuine contractors get none. The risk sits in between — a contractor who works like an employee can be reclassified, and the Court of Justice has confirmed that years of untaken paid leave can then be claimed at once.
Read →Leave tracking
Managing Annual Leave Across Multiple Countries
How to run one leave policy for a team spread across countries with different statutory minimums, public holidays, carryover rules and payout obligations — and why a shared spreadsheet fails at exactly the moment it matters.
Read →Cross-border hiring
Hiring Your First Employee Abroad: Leave & Holidays
The three ways to employ someone abroad — a local entity, an employer of record, or a contractor — and exactly what changes about paid leave, public holidays, payout and payroll the moment you hire outside your home country.
Read →Cross-border hiring
Which Country's Leave Law Applies to a Remote Employee?
For a remote employee in the EU or UK, the leave law of the country where they habitually work applies as a floor — whatever the contract says. How the Rome I Regulation, posting rules and social security fit together, with the US state-of-work rule.
Read →Cross-border hiring
US Company Hiring in Europe: What Changes for Paid Leave
Everything a US employer can leave to policy is set by law in Europe: at least four weeks of paid leave, public holidays on top, mandatory payout of unused days at exit, and no cashing out while employed. What to expect country by country, and how to structure a policy that works on both sides.
Read →Reference
The tables and tools
Leave entitlement by country
Statutory minimums for 52 countries, converted to comparable working days.
Compare →US PTO payout laws by state
All 51 US jurisdictions compared on payout and forfeiture.
Open →Annual leave calculator
Days-based, for the EU, UK, Australia and NZ: pro-rata, accrual, remaining balance, payout.
Calculate →US PTO accrual calculator
Hours per pay period, per hour worked, current balance and payout value.
Calculate →Leave management software
What each tool is actually for — including when a spreadsheet is enough.
Compare →Leavo review
Screens, pricing, fit — and what has not been verified yet, with the test protocol.
Read →Glossary
Accrual, carryover, payment in lieu, Werktage, TOIL, employer of record — defined to stand alone.
Look up →US state guides (51 published)
Editorial roadmap. The remaining 0 state pages are drafted but held back until verified against agency guidance. See methodology for why we publish these one at a time rather than all at once.