Do I get paid for unused leave when I leave a job?

Yes. Annual leave that you have accrued and not taken must be paid out to you when your employment ends. The Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997 (BCEA) requires it, and it makes no difference whether you resigned, were dismissed for misconduct, or were retrenched.

This guide is part of our Leave in South Africa: every type of leave and your rights, which links every guide on the topic.

What is not paid out is unused sick leave and unused family responsibility leave. Those are entitlements you use if you need them, not a savings account.

Old annual leave is the one real catch. The Labour Court has held that statutory annual leave not taken within six months after the end of the cycle in which it accrued is forfeited, so a large balance built up over several years may not all be payable. That is explained below.

How much annual leave you should have

The BCEA gives you at least 21 consecutive days of annual leave on full pay for each annual leave cycle of 12 months. For someone working a normal five day week, that works out to 15 working days a year. For a six day week it is 18 working days.

An employer can give more, and many do. It cannot give less. Your contract, a workplace policy or a bargaining council agreement may improve on the minimum. Our guide on how much annual leave you get covers the entitlement itself, including the one-day-for-every-17-days method used for part-time and irregular workers.

Leave accrues as you work. If you leave part way through a cycle, you are entitled to the leave that has built up for the period worked, less anything you have already taken, provided you have been employed for longer than four months.

What must be paid out

Section 40 of the BCEA says that on termination your employer must pay you:

1. Any leave that accrued in the previous completed cycle and that you did not take.
2. Leave accrued in the current, incomplete cycle, if you have been employed for longer than four months. The Act sets the minimum at one day's remuneration for every 17 days you worked or were paid for, or any calculation at least as favourable.
3. Paid time off you were owed and never took for overtime or Sunday work, where you had agreed to time off instead of a cash premium.
4. Anything more generous that your contract or a collective agreement provides.

This sits alongside the rest of your final payment: your salary to your last day, notice pay if applicable, and severance if you were retrenched. See What is the notice period when you resign? and Can my employer retrench me without paying severance?.

How the payout is calculated

The payment must be at the rate of your remuneration, worked out immediately before the employment ended. In practice most employers calculate a daily rate and multiply it by the number of days owed.

The important point is that "remuneration" is not always only your basic cash salary. A ministerial determination made under section 35(5) of the BCEA says what counts for leave pay, notice pay and severance pay. A housing or accommodation allowance, a car allowance or company car, and the employer's contributions to medical aid, pension or provident funds are included. A payment made to enable you to do the work, such as a tool or equipment allowance, is not. If you receive a fixed monthly allowance of the first kind, ask for it to be included and ask your employer to show you the calculation in writing.

Ask for a written breakdown of your final payslip. It should show the number of leave days paid, the daily rate used, and how that rate was reached. Our leave payout calculator gives you a figure to compare it with.

Worked example

This example is illustrative. Your contract and your employer's method may produce a different number.

Bongani works a five day week and earns R21 000 a month plus a fixed housing allowance of R600. His contract gives the BCEA minimum of 15 working days a year. He resigns and his last day is eight months into his current leave cycle. His employer's written leave policy lets staff carry unused days into the next cycle, and he carried 4 days over from the previous cycle. He has taken 3 days this cycle. Without that policy the 4 days would be at risk, because the six months after the previous cycle ended ran out two months ago.

• Leave accrued this cycle: 15 days divided by 12 months, multiplied by 8 months, which is 10 days.
• Total available: 4 days carried over plus 10 days accrued, less 3 days taken, which is 11 days.
• Monthly remuneration: R21 000 plus R600, which is R21 600.
• Daily rate: many employers divide the monthly figure by the average working days in a month, which is about 21.67 for a five day week. R21 600 divided by 21.67 is roughly R997.
• Leave payout: 11 days at about R997, which is roughly R10 967 before tax.

If his employer had left the allowance out and used R21 000, the daily rate would drop to about R969 and the payout to about R10 660. If it had "forgotten" the 4 carried over days, the payout would fall to about R6 979. Neither shortfall is large enough to justify an attorney, and both are exactly the kind of thing the Department of Employment and Labour deals with for free. Check the payslip line by line rather than the total.

When accrued leave can be lost, and when it cannot

Two rules shape what happens to leave you have not taken.

The six-month rule. Section 20(4) of the BCEA says the employer must grant annual leave no later than six months after the end of the leave cycle in which it accrued. The Labour Court has read that as a deadline for the employee too. In Jooste v Kohler Packaging (2004), Ludick v Rural Maintenance (2014) 2 BLLR 178 (LC) and Hartley v SMD Trading Group CC [2024] ZALCD 16, the court held that statutory annual leave not taken by the end of that six-month period is forfeited. So a "use it or lose it" rule that follows the six-month period is generally valid for the statutory minimum, and leave that has not been forfeited must still be paid out on termination under section 40.

There are important limits. The rule concerns the statutory minimum, so extra leave your contract gives you, and any agreement that lets you carry leave over, is governed by the contract or policy. And where you asked to take leave and your employer refused, it is arguably unfair for the employer to rely on forfeiture, but no higher court has settled the point. If that is your situation, keep the refused leave applications and the emails, because they are your evidence.

No payment instead of leave while employed. While you are still working, the BCEA does not allow annual leave to be replaced with a cash payment. The idea is that leave is for rest, not for topping up your salary. The exception is exactly this situation: on termination the outstanding leave is paid out.

Leave is taken when you and your employer agree, and if you cannot agree, at a time your employer decides. Your employer can require leave to be taken within the six-month period after the cycle ends. Our guide on whether your employer can force you to take leave, or refuse it deals with both sides of that.

Can leave be set off against notice?

Section 20(5)(b) of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act says an employer may not require or permit an employee to take annual leave during a period of notice of termination. Your employer cannot decide that your four week notice period will be "taken as leave" so that no leave payout is due, and on the wording of the Act even an agreement to do that does not make it lawful. Exit arrangements that set leave off against notice are common in practice, but the safer position is that notice is worked or paid, and unused leave is paid out under section 40.

Sick leave is treated differently. Section 37(5) of the Act stops an employer's notice from running at the same time as other leave, but it expressly allows notice to run while you are on sick leave.

Your rights and your employer's rights

You have the right to at least 21 consecutive days of annual leave a year, to take leave within six months after the cycle ends, to argue that leave your employer refused to grant should not be forfeited, to be paid out for accrued leave at your remuneration rate when you leave, to a written breakdown of the calculation, and to refuse to have notice and annual leave run together.

Your employer has the right to decide when leave is taken, within reason and after consulting you, to require leave to be taken within a set period after the cycle ends, to deduct leave you took in advance of accruing it if your contract allows, and to pay the leave out on the normal pay date after termination rather than on your last day. It does not have the right to wipe leave off the system that has not been forfeited, to pay leave out instead of granting it while you are employed, or to withhold the payout because of a separate dispute.

What about sick leave, maternity leave and family responsibility leave?

• Sick leave. The BCEA gives you, over a three year cycle, the number of days you would normally work in a six week period. Unused sick leave is not paid out and does not carry over beyond the cycle.
• Family responsibility leave. A limited number of days a year for specified family events. Unused days fall away and are not paid out.
• Parental leave. Since the Constitutional Court's Van Wyk judgment of 3 October 2025, what used to be maternity, paternity and adoption leave is one parental leave entitlement. It is a period of leave rather than an accruing balance, and there is no cash payout for unused entitlement. Payment during the leave usually comes from the Unemployment Insurance Fund, which still pays under its old categories, and the Unemployment Insurance Act 63 of 2001 governs those benefits.
• Study leave, birthday leave and similar perks. These come from your contract or policy, not the BCEA, so whether they are paid out depends entirely on what that document says.

What to do this week

1. Get your leave balance in writing from HR or the payroll system before your last day.
2. Reconcile it against your own records. Count the days you actually took and the days you carried over.
3. Check your last payslip for allowances that should form part of remuneration.
4. Work out your own estimate using the method above.
5. Ask for the final payslip breakdown showing days, daily rate and how the rate was reached.
6. Do not agree to "leave as notice" in the exit meeting. The Act does not allow annual leave to run during notice, and agreeing can cost you the payout.
7. Diarise the normal pay date after your last day. If the money is not there, write the same day.

Documents to gather

Keep your contract, the leave policy, your leave application forms or system printouts, your last six payslips, the payslip that shows the payout, your resignation or termination letter, and any correspondence about leave. If your employer has no leave records at all, your own diary, calendar and emails become the record, and the absence of the employer's records generally counts against it.

Common mistakes and what they cost

• Signing a full and final settlement without an itemised breakdown. A missed carry over or an excluded allowance is very hard to recover afterwards.
• Agreeing that notice will be taken as leave. Section 20(5)(b) does not permit it, the payout can disappear, and you may have nothing in writing to rely on.
• Sitting on leave for years. Statutory leave not taken within six months after the cycle ends can be forfeited, so take your leave and get any agreed carry-over in writing. Days that had not been forfeited and were quietly removed from the system can still be claimed.
• Confusing sick leave with annual leave. Unused sick leave has no cash value, so do not waste a dispute on it.
• Waiting months to complain. BCEA money claims have their own time limits, and the longer you wait the harder the records are to reconstruct.

If your employer does not pay

Start in writing. Ask for a breakdown and give a short, reasonable deadline. Keep the correspondence.

If that fails, all of these routes are free:

• The Department of Employment and Labour. Its inspectors enforce BCEA entitlements such as leave pay, notice pay and severance. This is often the fastest route for a straightforward money claim.
• A bargaining council, where one covers your sector.
• The CCMA on 0861 16 16 16. Referring a dispute is free.

The inspector's compliance order and the CCMA money claim under section 73A are both limited to employees who earn at or below the BCEA earnings threshold. Above it, the claim goes to court instead, and our guide on what to do when your employer does not pay you explains each route.

Take your contract, payslips, leave records and the termination letter with you. If your employer never kept leave records, that usually counts against them, because keeping those records is the employer's legal duty.

For a claim about the fairness of the dismissal itself, remember the separate 30 day deadline to refer an unfair dismissal, explained in how to refer an unfair dismissal to the CCMA.

If you cannot afford an attorney

A leave payout dispute rarely justifies one. The Department of Employment and Labour investigates unpaid BCEA money for free, the CCMA and bargaining councils charge nothing, and a union represents its members at no extra charge. Legal Aid South Africa is on 0800 110 110 and applies a means test. At CCMA arbitration legal representation is not automatic for misconduct and incapacity dismissals and the commissioner decides whether to allow it, so a money claim like this is one you can run yourself with a clear breakdown and your payslips.

Before you sign anything

Employers sometimes present a final settlement that lumps everything into one figure and includes a full and final release. Once you sign that, going back for the leave money is difficult. Ask for the breakdown first, check it against your own leave record, and only then decide.