Calculate total work days and business days between dates. Exclude weekends and custom holiday lists.
Business days (also called working days or weekdays) count only Monday through Friday, excluding Saturday and Sunday. Many professional and legal contexts measure time in business days rather than calendar days: payment terms (NET 30 business days), delivery SLAs (3 business days), regulatory response windows (5 business days), and contractual notice periods are all commonly specified in business days.
This calculator computes the exact business day count between any two dates, correctly handling weekend exclusions. Enter two dates to count working days between them, or specify a starting date and a business day offset to find the resulting date — useful for computing payment due dates, delivery estimates, and notice period deadlines.
Business day counting follows specific conventions that vary by context. In financial markets (bonds, options), day count conventions include Actual/Actual, Actual/360, and 30/360 — each specifying how to count days in interest calculations. Legal notice periods typically use the "notice of receipt" or "notice of dispatch" convention, affecting whether the sending or receiving date counts as day 1.
International trade and commerce must also account for jurisdiction-specific working weeks. Some Middle Eastern countries observe a Friday-Saturday weekend rather than Saturday-Sunday. This calculator uses the standard Western Saturday-Sunday weekend definition. For jurisdiction-specific calculations, the public holiday calendar of the relevant country must also be considered.
Adding N business days to a starting date (forward calculation) is the most common business day use case: "This invoice is due NET 30 business days from today" or "Your order will arrive within 3 business days." The calculation cannot simply add 30 calendar days — it must skip over weekends.
The algorithm iterates forward one day at a time, counting only Monday-Friday days until N business days have been accumulated. Optimization using integer arithmetic can compute the number of complete weeks (and weekdays within) to reach N business days efficiently: complete_weeks = N ÷ 5 (integer), remaining_days = N mod 5, then handle the fractional week from the correct weekday offset.
In most Western countries, business days are Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays. This calculator excludes Saturdays and Sundays but does not automatically exclude public holidays (which vary by country, region, and organization). For holiday-aware calculations, use a calendar-specific tool that includes the relevant jurisdiction's public holiday database.
NET 30 business days means payment is due 30 weekdays (Monday-Friday) after the invoice date. To find the due date: start from the invoice date, count forward 30 days that are Monday-Friday. This is approximately 6 calendar weeks (42 days) depending on which day of the week the invoice falls on. If the resulting date falls on a weekend or holiday, the due date moves to the next business day.
A standard month contains approximately 21-23 business days depending on month length and which days weekends fall on. A month with 31 days starting on Monday has 23 business days. February (28 days) starting on Saturday has only 20 business days. Quarterly averages: approximately 65 business days per quarter, 261 per year in most years.
When a calculated due date falls on Saturday or Sunday, the convention in most legal and financial contexts is to move the deadline to the next following Monday (the next business day). Some jurisdictions move to the preceding Friday. Contract and legal contexts should specify the weekend-handling convention explicitly to avoid disputes.
In most contexts, yes — working day and business day both mean Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays. Some employment agreements distinguish them: 'working days' may refer to your specific employer's working schedule (which might include Saturday shifts in retail or healthcare), while 'business days' conventionally means standard Monday-Friday. Check the specific context of any legal or contractual reference.