You have a new offer, your resignation letter is drafted, and you are counting down the weeks. Then a quieter question comes up: what happens to the holiday days you never got round to taking? If you work in Hungary, the answer can be worth tens of thousands of forints. You only get that money if you check the numbers before your notice period starts.

The rules come from Hungary’s Munka Törvénykönyve (Labour Code), which applies to people employed under a Hungarian employment contract. A recent explainer from the Hungarian employment-news site hovege.hu sets out how leave works when a job ends. Below, we turn those rules into a checklist you can use before you sign anything.

Who decides when you take your leave

Under the Hungarian labour code, your employer decides when you take leave, and that includes your notice period. Your employer has to hear your wishes first and tell you the dates at least 15 days in advance. In practice, a company can ask you to use up your remaining days before you leave. That is legal, as long as it gives you proper notice.

There is one exception that protects you. Every year, seven working days must be granted when you ask for them, in at most two parts. You can’t use this right in your first three months with an employer, so it matters more if you have been in the role for a while.

If your employer ends the contract, it must release you from work for at least half of the notice period. That release time is not leave. Your employer cannot use it to reduce the holiday you are owed.

How to calculate your pro-rata entitlement

Basic annual leave in Hungary is 20 working days. You may get extra days for your age, for your children or for other reasons, so your own total may be higher. When you leave partway through the year, you are entitled only to the share that matches the time you worked.

Here is the example from the hovege.hu explainer. An employee entitled to 26 days who works from 1 January to 30 June is owed 13 days. Two more rules help you:

• Rounding: a part-day of at least half a day counts as a full day.
• Carry-over: unused leave from previous years does not automatically disappear on 31 December. Old days you never took may still be owed to you.

What your payout is worth

While you are still employed, your employer can’t pay you cash instead of giving you leave. When the job ends, that changes. Any leave you are owed and haven’t taken must be paid out, whoever ended the contract. That covers resignation, dismissal and an agreed exit. The only exceptions are paternity leave and parental leave, which are not paid out this way.

The payout is based on your távolléti díj (absence pay). Using the hovege.hu example, a daily gross rate of HUF 20,000 with four days left gives HUF 80,000 gross, before tax and contributions. To see what that is in net terms, run the gross figure through a salary calculator together with your final month’s salary.

Five checks before you hand in your notice

• Ask HR or payroll for your total annual entitlement in writing, including any extra days.
• Work out your pro-rata share up to your planned last day, and round any part-day as the law allows.
• Count any untaken days carried over from earlier years.
• If you want specific days off during your notice period, ask early. Your employer must tell you the dates at least 15 days ahead.
• Keep copies of your leave records and payslips, in case the final settlement doesn’t add up.

Your rights if the money doesn’t arrive

When your contract ends with notice, your final payments are due by the fifth working day after your last day of work. That includes your leave payout. Mark the date in your calendar.

What if you took more leave than your pro-rata share by the time you leave? Your employer can’t simply deduct the difference from your final pay. The Labour Code sets no general duty to pay it back.

If you aren’t paid, you can complain to the employment supervisory authority or take your claim to a labour court. Employment claims generally expire after three years. You have time, but not unlimited time.

A clean exit starts with a clear count of your days. Checking the numbers takes ten minutes, and it can protect a month’s worth of groceries. How a company handles final settlements also tells you something about it. Employer reviews from former staff can show you which companies pay on time before you accept your next offer. If you are already looking at new jobs, keep a note of your leave balance so your next negotiation starts from accurate numbers.