How Visa Days Are Calculated: the 88-day weekly hours formula

Almost every backpacker counts their 88 days wrong, and it's not their fault — the rule is genuinely counter-intuitive. Your 88 days for the Working Holiday Visa are calculated from the hours you work each week, not the number of days you showed up. This guide shows the exact formula and walks through real weekly examples so you can calculate your own total with confidence.

The rule in one sentence

Take each Monday–Sunday week, add up all the hours you worked in eligible specified work, convert those hours into "visa days" using the official table below, then add up the visa days from every week. When the total hits 88, you qualify for a second year (176 for a third).

The official conversion table

• 4 – 7.24 hours in the week = 1 visa day
• 7.25 – 14.24 hours = 2 visa days
• 14.25 – 21.24 hours = 3 visa days
• 21.25 – 28.24 hours = 4 visa days
• 28.25 – 35.24 hours = 5 visa days
• 35.25 hours or more = 7 visa days

Worked example 1 — a full-time harvest week

Maria picks strawberries Monday to Saturday, about 7 hours a day. That's 42 hours in the week. 42 is well above 35.25, so the whole week is worth 7 visa days — even though she had Sunday off and only physically worked 6 days. One solid full-time week = a full 7 days toward your 88.

Worked example 2 — a part-time week

Tom works three café shifts of 6 hours each: 18 hours total. 18 falls in the 14.25–21.24 band, so that week is 3 visa days. It's a coincidence that he worked 3 days and got 3 days — change those shifts to two 9-hour days (still 18 hours) and he'd still get exactly 3. It's always the hours, never the days.

Worked example 3 — the light week that costs you

A rainy week on the farm: Lena only gets two short shifts of 1.5 hours, 3 hours total. Because that's under 4 hours, the entire week is worth 0 visa days. This is the single most common way people lose progress — a sub-4-hour week is wasted. If a week is going to be light, it's often worth picking up one more short shift to clear the 4-hour minimum and bank at least 1 day.

Putting it together — one month of work

Add the weeks up. Say a month looks like this:

• Week 1: 42 hours → 7 days
• Week 2: 18 hours → 3 days
• Week 3: 30 hours → 5 days
• Week 4: 38 hours → 7 days

Total for the month = 7 + 3 + 5 + 7 = 22 visa days. At that pace you would reach 88 in roughly four months — but a couple of full-time weeks would get you there much faster, and a few light weeks would slow you down a lot.

How many weeks does it really take to reach 88 days?

It depends entirely on your weekly hours. Here is the honest math:

• Full time (35.25 h+) → 7 days/week → about 13 weeks (~3 months)
• 28.25–35.24 h → 5 days/week → about 18 weeks
• 21.25–28.24 h → 4 days/week → about 22 weeks
• 14.25–21.24 h → 3 days/week → about 30 weeks
• 7.25–14.24 h → 2 days/week → about 44 weeks
• 4–7.24 h → 1 day/week → 88 weeks

Track the calculation automatically

Doing this by hand means rebuilding the table every week and hoping you grouped the dates correctly. Orary does it for you: log your shifts, and it slices them into Monday–Sunday weeks, applies this exact formula to each week, and shows a live total and progress bar toward 88 and 176 days — with your payslips and earnings tracked in the same place as evidence.