How to keep track of remaining leave days: calculating the balance, pro-rata entitlements, the 18-month carry-over, the classic Excel errors and how to eliminate them.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
In a small company, the leave balance lives in an Excel file that a single person updates. It works until that person is on leave, until someone is hired mid-year, or until an employee leaves and you need to know exactly how many days to compensate. Here is how the record should be kept — and where the errors actually come from.
The balance is the difference, at a given moment, between:
days entitled (the annual entitlement, pro rata where relevant) − days taken − days already approved for the future
Three components, not two. The most frequent record-keeping error is ignoring the third one: days that are approved but not yet taken must be deducted from the available balance, otherwise two employees can both be approved for days that no longer exist.
The statutory minimum is 20 working days per year for a full calendar year. More can be granted by contract. Certain categories (employees with disabilities, young people under 18, arduous conditions) are entitled to additional days.
For those hired or leaving during the year, the entitlement is granted pro rata:
days entitled = (days per year ÷ 12) × months worked
An employee with 20 days per year who joined on 1 September has, for that year, roughly 20 ÷ 12 × 4 = 6.67 days.
From the experience of companies that keep the record manually, almost all problems come from these six sources:
Each of these ends up producing either a day given away for free or a dispute with the employee.
Untaken days are not lost. The employer is obliged to grant the outstanding leave, as a rule, within 18 months from the end of the year in which the entitlement arose.
In practice, this means the record has to know not only how many days someone still has, but also which year they come from — because the older days must be used first, before they get close to the deadline.
A firm rule: while the contract is running, the right to leave cannot be replaced with money. Leave exists for rest, not as a bonus.
The only situation in which it is compensated in money is termination of the contract, whatever the reason (resignation, dismissal, agreement of the parties). The amount is calculated as outstanding days × the average daily allowance (the average of permanent entitlements over the last 3 months). That is why a correct balance on the leaving date is not an administrative matter — it is an amount to be paid.
How do I keep track of remaining leave days? Ideally, in a system that updates the balance automatically at every approved request and separates the types of absence. In a manual file, the minimum is to reserve the days on approval rather than when they are taken, and to keep the carry-over from the previous year separately.
What happens to unused leave days? They are carried over and must be granted, as a rule, within the next 18 months. They are not lost and cannot be paid in money while the contract is running.
How do I calculate the leave balance for someone hired during the year? Pro rata with the months worked: (days per year ÷ 12) × months worked. An employee entitled to 20 days who joined on 1 September has roughly 6.67 days for that year.
Can software calculate the leave balance automatically? Yes — and this is exactly the type of calculation where automation removes almost all errors: pro rata on hiring, reservation on approval, carry-over by year and separation by type of absence.
How do I approve employees’ leave requests quickly? Through a digital flow in which the request goes straight to the approving manager, with the balance visible at the moment of the decision and the record updated automatically after approval.
For the detailed calculation formulas see how to calculate annual leave, and for compensation on termination — payment for untaken leave.
The Leave module in Workly keeps the balance up to date, automatically, for every employee: it calculates the pro-rata entitlement for people hired during the year, reserves the days at the moment of approval (not when they are taken), keeps the carry-over from previous years separate and flags the days approaching the 18-month deadline.
Requests are submitted digitally and go through a configurable approval flow — the manager sees the available balance at the very moment of approving, and the record updates instantly, with no parallel files. The types of absence (annual leave, sick leave, time off, paternity leave) are handled separately, each with its own rules, and public holidays are not deducted from leave.
On termination, the amount to be compensated for untaken days is calculated automatically from the correct base and goes straight onto the final settlement payslip. For the question “how many days do I have left?”, the employee gets the answer on their own — from the internal assistant Modi, which answers deterministically, from the real data, with no external LLM and no risk of an invented figure. The result: fewer questions for HR and zero disputes over the numbers.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal advice. The rules on annual leave depend on the specific situation — always check the framework in force (the Labour Code, Codul muncii) or consult a specialist.
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