New flagship toolShift Worker Annual Leave Optimiser
Work a rotating roster? Enter the leave balance your employer says you have, anchor your repeating shift pattern to one known cycle-start date, and find the leave dates that create the longest continuous breaks.
Reviewed 17 September 2026Four presets plus custom cyclesWorked outputs verified
Calendar planning only.This tool does not calculate annual-leave entitlement, interpret your contract, determine bank-holiday rights or approve leave. Your employer's roster and leave system remain the source of truth.
↻Shift & leavePrivate browser calculation · no account required · planning estimate
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How to use the result
The suggested leave dates are generated only from the repeating cycle and anchor date you enter. Real rosters can contain training days, swaps, overtime, reserve periods, sickness changes or locally amended duties. Check the dates against your employer's live roster before requesting leave.
Why rotating shifts need a different leave planner
A conventional Monday-to-Friday leave maximiser can use weekends as predictable non-working days. Rotating rosters are different: the valuable leave dates move through the calendar as the cycle repeats. Taking several adjacent rostered work shifts can sometimes connect two longer rostered-off periods, while the same number of leave shifts elsewhere may produce a much shorter break.
Patterns supported
The presets cover four-on/four-off, two-days/two-nights/four-off, a common 2-2-3 work/off cycle and five-on/three-off. The custom option accepts any repeating cycle up to 42 days using work and off symbols.
What the optimiser deliberately does not do
- calculate statutory or contractual annual-leave entitlement;
- decide how many hours your employer should deduct for a leave shift;
- assume bank holidays are automatically non-working days;
- interpret employment contracts, collective agreements or local leave rules;
- predict whether a leave request will be approved.
Important planning checkEnter only the leave balance that your employer or roster system confirms is available to you. If your leave is recorded in hours rather than shifts, use your employer's own conversion method before using this planner.
Related shift tools
Comparable test inputsHow the same leave limit behaves across different patterns
The table below uses the calculator's default planning assumptions: 2027, a cycle-start date of 1 January, a 12-shift leave budget, no more than four leave shifts in one break and a minimum seven-day break. It is not a recommendation for those dates; it demonstrates why the selected sequence changes the output.
| Pattern tested | Rostered work positions in 2027 | Best single break found | Leave shifts used |
|---|
| 4 on / 4 off | 184 | 12 calendar days | 4 |
| 2 days / 2 nights / 4 off | 184 | 12 calendar days | 4 |
| Defined 2-2-3 preset | 183 | 11 calendar days | 4 |
| 5 on / 3 off | 230 | 7 calendar days | 4 |
The first two patterns have the same work/off geometry, so their calendar totals match under identical anchor dates. The day/night version retains duty labels to make employer-roster checking easier. The 2-2-3 and five-on/three-off cycles distribute work positions differently, so the same four-shift limit does not produce the same continuous break.