Prorated Salary Calculator
Work out partial pay for a mid-year start or end date, a partial pay period, or a part-time schedule.
Choose how you want to prorate the salary
Working days in the partial period
About 260 for a standard work year
How Salary Proration Works
Proration takes a full annual salary and scales it down to match the time an employee actually works. There are two common ways to do it. The first is based on days worked: you divide the full salary by the total working days in the period to get a daily rate, then multiply by the days the person actually worked. The second is based on FTE (full-time equivalent), where you multiply the full salary by the share of full-time hours the person works, so a 60 percent (0.6 FTE) schedule earns 60 percent of the salary.
A standard full work year is about 260 working days, which comes from 5 days a week multiplied by 52 weeks. That figure is before paid holidays and vacation, so the actual number of paid days an employee works is usually a bit lower. Many payroll teams use 260, 261, or 262 depending on how weekends fall in a given calendar year. Using a consistent denominator keeps proration fair and easy to audit across employees who start and stop at different points in the year.
Both methods should land on the same answer when the inputs agree. Working 130 of 260 days is exactly half the year, the same as a 50 percent FTE schedule, and both produce half of the full salary. The days-worked method is the natural choice for a one-time partial period (a hire date in March, a departure in September), while the FTE method fits an ongoing part-time arrangement that continues at the same percentage every pay period.
When You Need to Prorate Pay
The most common trigger is a mid-period start or end date. If a new hire begins partway through a pay cycle, or an employee leaves before the period closes, payroll prorates the salary so the paycheck reflects only the days worked. The same logic covers partial pay periods caused by unpaid leaves of absence, furloughs, or a switch between full-time and part-time partway through the year. One-time items like a sign-on bonus, relocation stipend, or annual allowance are also frequently prorated for someone who joins late in the year.
Part-time and job-share arrangements are an ongoing form of proration. Rather than recalculating each period, employers set an FTE percentage (for example 0.6 FTE for a three-day week) and apply it to the full-time salary every cycle. This keeps the pay predictable for the employee and makes it simple to compare a part-time wage against the equivalent full-time rate. If you are evaluating a part-time offer, you can pair this tool with our part-time FTE calculator to see the full picture across hours, FTE, and annual pay.
Salaried exempt employees follow special rules. Under federal wage and hour law, an exempt employee generally must receive their full weekly salary for any week in which they perform work, with only limited deductions allowed. Employers may, however, prorate pay for the first and last week of employment based on the days actually worked, which is exactly the partial-period case this calculator handles. Because deductions for partial days are restricted and state rules vary, it is worth confirming your specific situation against your employer policy before relying on a single number.
Reading Your Results
The headline figure is your prorated salary, the amount that matches the time worked rather than the full year. In days mode, the calculator also shows a daily rate (full salary divided by total working days), which is handy for double-checking a partial week or for prorating a single missed or extra day. The percent of full salary tells you what share of the annual figure you are receiving, so 50 percent confirms that the math lines up with half a year.
In FTE mode, the monthly equivalent breaks the prorated annual pay into twelve equal parts, which is useful for budgeting against a part-time schedule. Keep in mind that these figures are gross amounts before taxes and deductions. To see what actually lands in your bank account, run the prorated number through our take-home calculator, and if you are weighing a part-time salaried role against an hourly job, the salary vs hourly comparison can help you decide which structure pays more for your hours.
A quick sanity check is to confirm that days mode and FTE mode agree when they should. If you worked half the available days, your percent of full salary should read close to 50 percent, matching a 0.6 FTE result only if that part-time schedule is genuinely 60 percent of full time. Small differences usually come from the total working days you enter, so adjust that denominator to match your actual calendar before trusting the final figure.