Our company used to have vacation and sick leave. Every year on January 1st it was replenished 4 weeks of vacation and 4 days of sick leave or 192 hours total. The full amount was yours to use immediately or if you happen to quit it was paid out in full (minus what you may have used of course). They was no accrual period. Now on the PTO system the company makes the full 192 hours available to you starting on January 1st but the reality is if you start using it immediately on January 1st you are essentially using borrowed time because you haven’t actually accrued the time off yet. If you quit before you accrue PTO equal to the time you’ve already taken off then you owe them money back which they withhold from your final paycheck. If you wait until mid-year to start taking time off then you’ve usually accrued enough to keep from going in the hole on borrowed time the rest of the year. If you happen to quit with more than 2 weeks of accrued time, they will only pay out up to a max of 2 weeks. Under they old vacation/sick leave system you could accrue up to 6 weeks that they would pay out if you quit. I think someone mentioned earlier, the PTO system is a way for companies to manage their cost liabilities. I would tend to agree based on the way the company I work for does it.
