Leave Days Calculator South Africa: BCEA Leave Balance and Premium Pay for Employers

Section 20 gives an employee 21 consecutive days of paid annual leave for every completed annual leave cycle of 12 months. The catch is that 21 consecutive days counts calendar days, weekends included, so it works out to three weeks of the employee's own working pattern. For somebody on a five day week that is 15 working days, and for somebody on a six day week it is 18 working days. For a part-timer on three days a week it is nine working days, not 15. Section 20(2) allows an alternative of one day for every 17 days worked, which comes to about 15.29 days a year on a five day week, but that method applies only by agreement, so it is a choice you must actually have made with the employee rather than a better deal either side can assume.

No, and this is probably the single most common annual leave mistake employers make. The Act says 21 consecutive days, which includes the weekends that fall inside that stretch. Three calendar weeks contains 15 working days for a five day week employee, so granting 21 working days is granting about 40% more leave than the statutory minimum. That is entirely lawful, the BCEA is a floor and you may always be more generous, but you should know you are doing it rather than discover it later in a leave balance you cannot explain.

Section 22(2) gives an employee the number of days they would ordinarily work in a six week period, as paid sick leave, per 36 month cycle. That is 30 days on a five day week and 36 days on a six day week, and it is a cycle allowance rather than an annual one, so an employee who uses all 30 days in year one has none left for the following two years. During the employee's first six months a different rule applies under section 22(3): they earn one day of paid sick leave for every 26 days worked, which comes to roughly five days by the end of the six months on a five day week. The calculator above works out which of the two rules applies from the start date you enter.

You may, but only if you choose to, and only in the first sick leave cycle. Section 22(4) says an employer may reduce the section 22(2) entitlement by the number of days of sick leave taken under section 22(3) during the first six months. The important word is may. It is an employer election, not something that happens automatically, and it is worth exactly the number of days taken in that first six months. If an employee took four sick days in their first six months and you apply the reduction, they have 26 days for the rest of the cycle rather than 30, so 30 days in total across the cycle. If you do not apply it they end up with 34 in total. The calculator has this as a tick box precisely because both answers are lawful and the difference is yours to make.

Section 27 puts three days per annual leave cycle behind two separate gates, and an employee has to clear both. They must have been employed for longer than four months, and they must work at least four days a week for you. An employee on a three day week never qualifies, however many years they have been with you, which surprises a lot of employers. It also covers only the specific events the section lists, the birth or illness of the employee's child and the death of certain named family members, so it is not a general compassionate or emergency leave allowance.

From 1 May 2026 the threshold is R269,600.90 a year, which is R22,466.74 a month. An employee earning above it is excluded from sections 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17(2) and 18(3) of the Act, which is to say ordinary hours, overtime, compressed weeks, averaging, meal intervals, rest periods, Sunday pay, the night work allowance and the public holiday rule for a day the employee would not ordinarily work. In plain terms you are not statutorily required to pay a high earner overtime or Sunday premiums. What the threshold does not touch matters just as much: every leave entitlement in Chapter Three, so annual, sick, family responsibility and parental leave, applies to all employees whatever they earn, and so does the section 37 notice period. Note also that a contract or company policy promising overtime pay to a high earner is still enforceable as a contractual term, the threshold only removes the statutory obligation. One detail worth getting right: earnings for this purpose means regular annual remuneration before deductions such as tax, pension and medical, but it excludes the employer's own contributions, subsistence and transport allowances, achievement awards and overtime pay. An employee on R21,000 basic plus a R3,000 travel allowance sits on either side of the R22,466.74 monthly figure depending on whether you apply that definition, and the answer changes every premium you owe them, so it is worth doing properly.

Section 35(4) sets the method and it is not the obvious one. A monthly remuneration converts to a weekly figure by multiplying by 12 and dividing by 52, not by dividing by four. From that weekly figure, the hourly rate divides by the employee's ordinary hours a week and the daily rate divides by the days they work a week. So R18,000 a month is R4,153.85 a week, R92.31 an hour on a 45 hour week, and R830.77 a day on a five day week. Dividing the monthly salary by 30 instead would give R600 a day and understate every single premium and leave pay-out you calculate from it.

Section 16 sets double the wage for each hour worked if the employee does not ordinarily work Sundays, and one and a half times if Sundays are part of their normal pattern. There is a trap in section 16(2) that catches a lot of employers: if the amount that calculation produces is less than the employee's ordinary daily wage, you must pay the ordinary daily wage instead. So a three hour Sunday shift for somebody on R18,000 a month works out to R553.85 at double time, which is below their R830.77 daily wage, and the correct payment is therefore R830.77. Calling in an employee for a short Sunday shift costs you a full day either way.

Section 18 splits into three genuinely different cases. If the public holiday falls on a day the employee would ordinarily work and they do not work, they are simply paid as normal. If it falls on such a day and they do work, you owe at least double the daily wage, or the daily wage plus what they earned for the time worked if that is more. If it falls on a day they would not ordinarily work and they work it, you owe the ordinary daily wage plus what they earned for the time worked. One practical point the calculator handles for you: for a monthly paid employee the salary already covers the ordinary wage for their normal pattern, so an unworked public holiday adds nothing to payroll, and a worked one on an ordinary working day adds one extra day's wage rather than two.

No, and any figure you see quoted as the statutory rate is somebody's market practice, not the Act. Section 17 requires an employer to pay an allowance, which may be a shift allowance, or to reduce working hours, for work performed between 18:00 and 06:00, but it deliberately sets no percentage. Work after 23:00 brings further obligations around transport and health assessments. The calculator therefore takes your own agreed allowance as an input rather than inventing a rate, and says so on the page.

On 3 October 2025 the Constitutional Court confirmed in Van Wyk v Minister of Employment and Labour [2025] ZACC 20 that the old maternity and parental leave sections unfairly discriminate between classes of parents. The declaration of invalidity is suspended for 36 months so Parliament can fix the Act, but paragraph 5 of the order reads replacement wording into the BCEA in the meantime, so this is the law now and not a pending proposal. Section 25A, the old ten days for the non-birth parent, is deleted. A single parent, or the only employed party in a parental relationship, gets at least four consecutive months. Where both parties are employed they are entitled in the aggregate to four months and ten days, split by agreement or, failing agreement, as close to half each as possible. Two details are widely reported wrongly: the four months and ten days applies where both parents are employed, a single parent gets four months rather than four months and ten days, and although the Court did declare the under-two age limit on adoption leave invalid, that declaration is suspended as well and the read-in wording keeps the limit, so the age limit still stands for now.

Accrued annual leave, always, and section 40 splits it into two parts that are calculated differently. Untaken leave from cycles the employee has already completed is paid out in full under section 40(b). The current, incomplete cycle is paid under section 40(c), and only if the employee has been employed longer than four months. Unused sick leave and family responsibility leave are entitlements rather than savings and simply lapse, so nothing is paid out for those. Notice under section 37 is separate again, either worked or paid in lieu. If the departure is a retrenchment there is severance pay on top, and our retrenchment calculator covers that from the employee's side.

Because section 40(c) sets a floor for the incomplete cycle that is independent of however you accrue leave during the year. It requires one day's remuneration for every 17 days on which the employee worked or was entitled to be paid, or remuneration on any basis that is at least as favourable to the employee. That last phrase is the key one: the one day per 17 days figure is a minimum, not an alternative method you get to elect, so if your accrual method produces less you must pay the higher figure. It matters in practice. An employee on a five day week who is eight months into a cycle has accrued exactly 10 of their 15 days on the 21 consecutive day method, but has worked about 174 days, which puts the section 40(c) floor at 10.23 days. On R18,000 a month that gap is worth about R190, and it is the sort of difference that turns up in a CCMA referral rather than in a payroll report. The calculator shows the balance and the pay-out separately for exactly this reason.

It is the other way around. The BCEA sets a floor, and a bargaining council agreement or a sectoral determination for your industry can and frequently does require more than the statutory minimum. There are separate sectoral determinations covering domestic work, farm work, contract cleaning, hospitality, wholesale and retail and others, and where one applies to you its terms are what you owe. The same goes for the employee's own contract or your company policy where these are more generous. Check those first, then use this calculator to confirm you are at least clearing the statutory minimum underneath them.