Cash value of accrued annual leave.
Leave pay due
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Daily rate
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Accrued days
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The leave you earned but never took
Under the Employment Act 2007, every employee in Kenya earns at least 21 working days of paid annual leave for each full year of service. That is the statutory floor, and your contract can be more generous but not less. When you leave a job, any leave you accrued but did not take does not simply evaporate. It converts to cash. This calculator works out that cash value: how much your employer should add to your final dues for the leave days sitting in your balance on your last day.
The mechanics are simple once you see the daily rate. The tool takes your monthly gross, annualises it by multiplying by twelve, then divides by 260 to get a per-day figure. Why 260? It treats the year as 52 weeks of 5 working days, which is the common convention for valuing a working day of pay. That divisor is a calculation choice, not a number written into statute. The 21-day entitlement is the statutory part, set by the Employment Act and overseen by the Ministry of Labour; the 260-day rate is simply how this tool turns a monthly salary into a daily one.
Fifteen accrued days on a KES 80,000 salary
Picture someone earning KES 80,000 a month who resigns with 15 untaken leave days on the books, the values this tool loads by default. First the daily rate: KES 80,000 times twelve is KES 960,000 a year, divided by 260 working days gives roughly KES 3,692 a day. Multiply that by the 15 accrued days and the leave pay owed is about KES 55,385, which should appear in the final settlement alongside salary to the last day and any other dues.
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The chart shows the build-up: the small teal block is one day of pay, and the wide bar is the same rate repeated across all 15 days to reach the payout. Seeing it laid out this way makes clear that the only two levers are your daily rate and the number of days you banked.
A trap on the payslip: leave pay is still taxable
One thing people forget is that this payout is not tax-free. Leave pay is part of your employment income, so it is added to your final-month earnings and runs through PAYE in the normal way. If your settlement lands in a month alongside salary and perhaps a gratuity, the combined figure can push part of it into a higher PAYE band, so the cash that reaches your account is less than the gross leave pay shown here. The number this tool gives is the gross entitlement before any deductions.
Who should use this
It suits anyone resigning, being made redundant, or simply checking whether HR computed their final dues correctly. A practical tip on the days figure: your accrued balance is your earned leave minus what you have already taken, and many employers cap how much leave you can carry over year to year. If your payslip shows fewer days than you expected, check the carry-over rule in your contract before assuming an error, because untaken leave beyond the cap may have lapsed rather than accrued.
Can my employer force me to take leave instead of paying it out?
While you are employed, yes. Employers can require you to clear leave to manage operations and to avoid a large carry-over building up. The cash conversion is what happens at the end of employment for any genuinely untaken balance. So the payout in this tool is most relevant on exit, not as a way to bank leave for cash while you stay on.
Should I use 30 days or 260 days to value a leave day?
Both conventions exist. Some employers divide the monthly salary by the calendar days or by 30 to get a daily rate, which produces a slightly different figure from the working-day basis used here. This tool uses 260 working days because leave is counted in working days. If your contract specifies a particular method, follow it, and treat the gap between the two approaches as a question for your HR or the Ministry of Labour rather than a calculation error.