How to check holiday pay

When a review is useful

Check the cal­cu­la­tion before annual leave, after re­ceiv­ing a payslip, or when the amount differs no­tice­ably from the pre­vi­ous year. A dif­fer­ence is not nec­es­sar­i­ly an error: the months, salary, ex­clud­ed days, or bonuses may have changed. Start with the com­plete input table, not an ex­pect­ed figure.

For a Kyiv office, a company with re­gion­al branch­es, or a remote team, the formula is the same. Records may sit across HR soft­ware and an ex­ter­nal ac­count­ing provider, so request an item­ized break­down rather than a general answer that the soft­ware cal­cu­lat­ed it.

This guide covers pay for annual leave ac­tu­al­ly taken. For payment on ter­mi­na­tion, see the sep­a­rate guide to com­pen­sa­tion for unused leave; dif­fer­ent cal­cu­la­tion bases may apply to en­ti­tle­ments through 2023 and from 2024.

Applicable period and rules

Under Pro­ce­dure No. 100, the usual period is the 12 cal­en­dar months before the month leave begins. For leave start­ing in Sep­tem­ber 2026, that is Sep­tem­ber 2025 through August 2026. If em­ploy­ment has lasted less than a year, use the full cal­en­dar months ac­tu­al­ly worked; do not insert zeros for missing months.

The nu­mer­a­tor in­cludes pay­ments per­mit­ted by Pro­ce­dure No. 100. Salary alone does not replace actual payroll entries. Bonuses, awards, sick pay, earlier holiday pay, busi­ness-trip pay, and other items require proper clas­si­fi­ca­tion. Quar­ter­ly or annual bonuses may need al­lo­ca­tion to the months for which they were awarded; placing the whole amount in its payment month can distort the average.

The de­nom­i­na­tor is the cal­en­dar days in the period after lawful ex­clu­sions. Exclude only days sup­port­ed by a ground in Pro­ce­dure No. 100, not in­con­ve­nient or non-working days chosen at will. During martial law, Article 73 of the Labour Code on public and non-working days does not apply, so a 2026 holiday is not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly removed merely because of its name.

Divide el­i­gi­ble gross earn­ings by the cal­cu­la­tion-period days, then mul­ti­ply by the paid cal­en­dar days of leave. Keep the daily average precise and round the final amount to cents. The holiday-pay cal­cu­la­tor can help with the arith­metic, but do not enter an un­al­lo­cat­ed bonus or in­com­plete data.

The general current rule is payment before leave starts. A law, em­ploy­ment agree­ment, or col­lec­tive agree­ment may set another dead­line. Do not rely on an old tem­plate that says payment is always due three days in advance without check­ing the current rule and ap­plic­a­ble doc­u­ments.

If sick pay or busi­ness-trip pay is dis­put­ed, review it sep­a­rate­ly using the sick-pay guide or busi­ness-trip pay guide. The cal­cu­la­tion of an item and whether it counts toward holiday pay are sep­a­rate ques­tions.

Steps to take

1. Confirm the leave dates. Get the leave order and check the first and last days and paid cal­en­dar-day count. If leave is split, check the part cur­rent­ly granted.
2. Set the cal­cu­la­tion period. Count back from the month leave begins. For service under a year, check the hiring date and full-cal­en­dar-month rule. Record the period sep­a­rate­ly.
3. List monthly earn­ings. Copy gross amounts from payslips. Ask ac­count­ing to mark in­clud­ed and ex­clud­ed entries and the legal ground. Do not es­ti­mate gross pay from a net bank deposit.
4. Check bonuses. For each quar­ter­ly, half-year, or annual bonus, iden­ti­fy its period and monthly al­lo­ca­tion. If no al­lo­ca­tion table exists, ask for one rather than guess­ing.
5. Count cal­en­dar days. Record the total days and each ex­clu­sion, with dates, reason, source doc­u­ment, and the ap­plic­a­ble rule in Pro­ce­dure No. 100. Do not deduct hol­i­days au­to­mat­i­cal­ly or twice.
6. Check the formula. Add el­i­gi­ble monthly amounts, divide by total days less lawful ex­clu­sions, and mul­ti­ply by leave days. Compare with gross payroll, not the net card deposit.
7. Send a spe­cif­ic request. If the figures differ, send the em­ploy­er a table showing the period, pay­ments, days, your formula, the em­ploy­er’s amount, and the dif­fer­ence. Ask for an ex­pla­na­tion or cor­rec­tion and keep proof of de­liv­ery.

Before submitting a request

Make sure you compare like with like. The cal­cu­la­tor result is gross holiday pay before taxes. A bank deposit is net of de­duc­tions and may combine several pay­ments. Compare the gross amount on the payslip first, then de­duc­tions, then the actual trans­fer.

Do not call the entire dif­fer­ence a debt until the source data have been checked. The issue may be the leave days, period bound­aries, bonus, day ex­clu­sion, or a cor­rect­ed payroll entry. If there were no earn­ings in the period and ac­count­ing used a tariff rate or salary, the stan­dard formula based on actual monthly amounts is not enough; the special rule re­quires manual review.

For a company with several legal en­ti­ties, check which entity is named as em­ploy­er in the leave order and payslip. Do not combine records from dif­fer­ent em­ploy­ers without a legal basis. If records are un­avail­able because they were re­lo­cat­ed or lost, Pro­ce­dure No. 100 con­tains special martial-law rules; an ap­prox­i­mate online result does not replace ap­ply­ing them.

If the em­ploy­er accepts an arith­metic error, request a cor­rect­ed payslip and the date of the ad­di­tion­al payment. If the dis­crep­an­cy is an unpaid wage amount, also check the guide to re­cov­er­ing unpaid wages and the current court-claim dead­line.

When to consult a lawyer

Legal help is useful if the em­ploy­er refuses monthly details, does not explain al­lo­ca­tion of a sig­nif­i­cant bonus, ex­clud­ed days without doc­u­ments, or relies only on a closed ac­count­ing-soft­ware cal­cu­la­tion. A lawyer can dis­tin­guish an arith­metic issue from a dispute over el­i­gi­ble pay and frame a request around spe­cif­ic dis­crep­an­cies.

A sep­a­rate review is needed if there were no earn­ings, em­ploy­ment covered only part of a cal­en­dar month, primary records were lost due to hos­til­i­ties, several leave types overlap, or the number of leave days is dis­put­ed. In these cases, a stan­dard cal­cu­la­tor cor­rect­ly stops.

For an em­ploy­ee in Kyiv or Kyiv Oblast, a useful con­sul­ta­tion should produce a ver­i­fied source table, a written request to the em­ploy­er, and an as­sess­ment of next steps. A promise of a precise ad­di­tion­al payment without the leave order, payslips, and bonus records is not a re­li­able con­clu­sion.