12.07% holiday pay calculator for zero-hours and irregular hours

Holiday pay at 12.07%

Updates as you type. It runs in your browser, so nothing you enter is saved or sent anywhere.

This pay period

Hours workedhHourly rate£

Other pay for the work (overtime, shift premiums)£Leave at 0 if you only get the hourly rate.

Rolled-up holiday pay

Holiday you build up: hours, counted as hours

Pay for the hours worked

Rolled-up holiday pay

Pay plus rolled-up holiday

• If your employer pays holiday as you go, this is roughly the separate holiday line you should see on this payslip.
• The 12.07% method is for irregular-hours and part-year workers in England, Wales and Scotland whose leave year started on or after 1 April 2024. Rolled-up holiday pay has to show as its own line on the payslip.

Rolled-up holiday payBreakdown

ShiftWallet. The iPhone app that works out what every shift should pay. Free to start. Pro is optional.

If you work irregular hours or only part of the year in Great Britain, you build up holiday at 12.07% of the hours you work in each pay period, as long as your leave year started on or after 1 April 2024. Enter the hours from one pay period above to see how much holiday that adds. If your employer rolls holiday pay into your wages, you'll also see roughly what the separate holiday line on that payslip should be.

Where 12.07% comes from

Almost every worker in Great Britain is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid holiday a year. That leaves 46.4 weeks of work, and 5.6 divided by 46.4 is 0.1207. So for every hour you work, you earn 0.1207 of an hour of holiday. Some older pages still say employers can't use 12.07% any more. For irregular-hours and part-year workers, the 2024 reforms wrote it into regulation 15B of the Working Time Regulations.

How the rounding works

Holiday builds up on the last day of each pay period. If the result has a part hour left over, under 30 minutes counts as nothing and 30 minutes or more counts as a whole hour. No more than 28 days can build up this way in a leave year.

The 68 hour line is GOV.UK's own example. The 96 hour line is the calculator's starting point: 96 hours at £12.71 is £1,220.16 of pay, 12 hours of holiday, and a rolled-up holiday line of £147.27.

A real case: 1,450 hours

A worker on r/LegalAdviceUK whose manager was refusing their holiday pay had already done the sums:

"I’m on a zero-hour contract (England) and recently audited my hours. I've worked roughly 1,450 hours, which at the standard 12.07% accrual rate equals about 175 holiday hours."

r/LegalAdviceUK, September 2026

The maths holds up. 1,450 × 12.07% is 175.0 hours. Because the rounding happens in each pay period, the official total can come out a few hours higher or lower, which is why the calculator works one period at a time. Holiday already taken comes off the total.

Check the hours before the percentage

12.07% of the wrong number is still wrong. The usual mistake is minutes typed as if they were decimals, so that a shift of 7 hours 59 minutes goes onto the payslip as 7.59 hours when it's really 7.98. Divide the minutes by 60 before you enter them here. The payslip guide has a table of the common ones and a real case from an agency worker who lost about 24 minutes on a single shift that way.

Who can use the 12.07% method

• Irregular-hours workers. Your paid hours in each pay period are, under your contract, wholly or mostly variable. Most zero-hours contracts fall here.
• Part-year workers. Under your contract you only work part of the year, with unpaid stretches of at least a week when you aren't required to work.

If you work fixed hours, your holiday is normally worked out in weeks and paid when you take it. And if your contract gives you more than the legal minimum, Acas notes the percentage has to go up to match. Northern Ireland has its own rules.

Rolled-up holiday pay on the payslip

For irregular-hours and part-year workers, your employer can pay holiday as you go instead of when you take it, as an uplift on top of your pay. Regulation 16A and the guidance around it set the rules:

1. 1Pay period. The dates this payslip covers. Check your own record for exactly these dates, because hours after the cut-off go on the next one.
2. 2Hours and rate. If your pay depends on the hours you work, the payslip has to show the hours you're paid for. It's the first number to check.
3. 3Enhancements. Night, weekend or bank holiday extras. Check the hours and the rate against your contract. Some employers pay them a month late.
4. 4Holiday pay at 12.07%. If your holiday pay is rolled up, it has to sit on its own line like this. That applies to irregular-hours and part-year workers in Great Britain.
5. 5Gross pay. Everything before deductions. This is the figure to compare with your own record or with ShiftWallet.
6. 6Deductions. Income tax under your tax code, National Insurance and pension. They depend on your situation, so they won't tell you if hours are missing.
7. 7Net pay. What reaches your bank. Comparing it with your hours almost always misleads, because the deductions are already gone.

• It has to be at least 12.07% of your total pay for the work in that pay period. Acas gives the example of £1,000 earned in June, which means at least £120.70 of rolled-up holiday pay that month.
• Total pay means all the payments that count towards a week's holiday pay, not just the basic rate, so regularly paid overtime, for example, goes in too. The "other pay" box in the calculator is there for that.
• It must appear as a separate line on every payslip.
• Your employer should tell you before they start doing it.

Holiday pay and the minimum wage

Someone on r/UKJobs asked about exactly this:

"Basically my hourly rate is below minimum wage (I’m 28) but with the holiday pay it is over minimum wage."

r/UKJobs, July 2026

GOV.UK's guidance on the 2024 reforms says rolled-up holiday pay is paid in addition to your normal pay, which should be at the National Minimum Wage or above. The rate is £12.71 an hour at 21 or over, from April 2026. HMRC's manual (NMWM09180) adds that holiday pay counts towards your minimum wage pay at first and comes back out when you actually take the holiday. Put the two together and a basic rate under the minimum, lifted over it only by the holiday line, isn't how it's supposed to work. Raise it with payroll, and with HMRC if nothing changes.

In ShiftWallet

ShiftWallet has a rolled-up holiday pay field on each job. Type 12.07 and it adds that percentage to every hour you log, which brings the pay it expects close to a payslip with a rolled-up line. It's free.

Since version 2.4 you can log time off in the app as well. To work out the holiday you build up at 12.07% in one pay period, use the calculator at the top of this page.