What is the benefit recreation allowance?

Would you like to take a vacation and receive financial support from your employer?

Then the Benefit Recreation Allowance is just right for you!

As an individual, you can receive up to €156 per calendar year in addition to your salary for your vacation. Sounds too good to be true? It gets even better!

If you go on vacation with your partner, you'll receive up to €104 on top and up to €52 per child.

How does it work?

1. open your :pxtra app

2. select the benefit recreation allowance

3. enter the required data: Month of vacation, number of children, marital status

4. if you want to adjust the amount that is blocked for you each month, click on the Adjust amount button. The system will immediately show you the new values for the total payout and your remaining budget at the top.

5. finally, activate the toggle to confirm that the costs you have specified are actually incurred for the purpose of recovery, click on Activate and then confirm your benefit selection in the budget planner.

What you need to know

The recreation allowance is only valid for leave in the same year and cannot be used across years.

You should keep receipts for payments made during your vacation, e.g. concert tickets or events, as the recreation allowance is legally linked to direct expenditure during your vacation.

As the amounts for the benefit recreation allowance are usually too high to fit into the (still) available monthly budget, the amount available to you per year is distributed over the remaining months of the year at the time of activation. However, you will receive it in full with the payroll in the month of the specified vacation.

Example:

You apply for vacation allowance in February. As you have a partner and a child, you receive the basic amount of €156, an additional amount of €104 for your partner and €52 for your child. That's a total of €312. This amount will be spread over your budget over 10 months (from March to December).

Each month, € 31.20 of the budget is now blocked for the recreation allowance (€ 312 / 10 months). You will receive the €312 from your employer with your payslip. This takes place in the month of the specified leave.

Confirmation of leave via the app

In the month before the specified vacation period, you will receive a notification in the app asking you to confirm that the vacation will take place as planned. Only if you confirm this will the vacation allowance be paid to you in full with the next payslip.

If the vacation had to be postponed or canceled, you have the option of canceling the benefit directly in the app, the budget will be free again from the following month and you can use it elsewhere or reactivate the recovery allowance.

If the vacation month is already the following month when you activate the benefit, this query in the app is omitted and you will receive the payment of the recovery allowance in the next month (= vacation month) with your pay slip.

Further information

All the important points are summarized for you here.*

*only available in german