A guide for those who want to know how vacation pay is calculated

Accounting science is not as complicated as it seems at first glance. It simply has a lot of nuances, which you must know, when you start making any calculations. In order to do any, even the simplest calculation, you need to methodically and slowly process a bunch of documents. From the accountant in this case, you need the utmost attention and perseverance.

The area of payroll can be considered the most problematic. It directly concerns each employee separately, and this fact imposes a certain responsibility on the accountant. You must be extremely careful not to forget anything and not lose sight of it. Take, for example, a vacation. Only a simple man in the street may think his calculation is quick and simple enough. In fact, in order to understand how vacations are calculated, it is necessary to know thoroughly the relevant normative documents with all their additions and changes. Work should be done in stages, carefully processing all primary data. Even special methods have been worked out, helping to understand how vacations are calculated in those or other cases. The whole process can be divided into four main stages.

At the first stage it is necessary to determine the calculation period. According to the labor legislation of Russia, a worker is paid his wages for the last twelve months of his work for calculating vacation payouts . Here it is necessary to be extremely attentive. In the calculation are taken only those payments that are provided for in the employment contract or contract. From the accrued amount it is necessary to exclude material aid, sick leave, payment for overtime work and various occasional bonuses. The remaining amount must be added monthly. Thus, we will get the salary, accrued for the whole previous year. Knowing how vacation pay is calculated, the accountant simply takes monthly transcripts and makes a selection. There is also a small nuance here. According to the law, the employer can give the employee leave even if he has not worked for a whole year. With the consent of the management, after 6 months of work, you can get the right to another working holiday. Here the accountant will need to perform a double work: compare the results obtained for the period worked and the same figures, but for the whole year. Choose the most beneficial option for the employee. All the subtleties concerning the period should be clearly stipulated in the documents for the granting of leave.

At the second stage, it is necessary to analyze the salary of an employee during the entire accounting period. If during this time the enterprise raised the rates and salaries, then this fact must be taken into account.

At the third stage it is necessary to determine the salary of an employee on average for one day. For this purpose, the adjusted total accruals for the year are divided by the number of months (for a full vacation for the worked year - 12). And then the received value should be divided by another 29.4 (the average number of calendar days in a month).

At the fourth stage, it only remains to multiply the value found by the number of days of vacation and you can consider the calculation to be complete.

All the explanations given above can be reduced to a mathematical equation, and we obtain a formula for calculating the vacation:

The amount of vacation = ZPrasch. / 12 / 29.4 x D,

Where:

ZPrasch. - Salary for the billing period;

12 - the number of months in a year;

29,4 - the average monthly number of days;

D - number of days of vacation.

This formula will be simple only after careful preliminary calculations. But here, too, has its own "pitfalls." For example, if the employee was sick during the billing period, the illness time is automatically excluded from the number of days taken for calculation. In this case, the formula will look like this:

The amount of vacation = ZPrasch. / (29.4 х Мрчч.п. + Драсч.н.) Х Д,

Where Мрчч.п. - the number of fully worked months.

In turn, Drach.n. = 29.4 / A x (A - H), where:

Desc. - number of days worked in an incomplete month;

A - the number of days (calendar) in a given month;

H is the number of days not worked.

So the calculation of the leave is made at any enterprise or organization, regardless of the form of ownership. It can be seen that this is a rather laborious process. But it will not be a big problem for someone who will perform it carefully during the stage after the stage. Only this way you can figure out how vacation pay is calculated, and do not be afraid to make a mistake. An attentive specialist must carefully study all primary documents before starting the calculation, select the necessary data and only then reduce everything to simple mathematical calculations.