How to Calculate Business Days Between Two Dates

Counting weekdays by hand: the full-week shortcut

You don't need to tick off a calendar day by day. Any run of 7 consecutive days contains exactly 5 weekdays, so:

1. 1
   Count the calendar days in the range, including both ends.
2. 2
   Divide by 7. Each full week contributes 5 business days.
3. 3
   Look at the leftover days (0–6) and count how many of them are Monday–Friday.
4. 4
   Subtract any public holidays that fall on a weekday inside the range.

Example: Tuesday 3 March to Monday 30 March 2026 is 28 days — exactly 4 weeks — so 20 business days, and no US or UK holiday falls in that stretch.

Do you count the first day? The question behind most disputes

There are two common conventions, and they differ by a day:

Spreadsheets follow the same split: NETWORKDAYS includes both dates, while WORKDAY moves forward from a date without counting it. When a contract or regulation sets a deadline, its own wording wins — some legal deadlines count calendar days and only roll forward if the last day is a weekend or holiday.

Adding business days to find a deadline

To find the date that is N business days after a start date, step forward one day at a time, skip weekends and holidays, and stop when you have counted N working days. The start date itself isn't counted.

Example: 5 business days after Thursday 2 July 2026, in the US. Independence Day is a Saturday that year, so federal offices observe it on Friday 3 July. Counting Monday 6 to Friday 10 July gives a deadline of Friday 10 July — one day later than you'd get by ignoring the observed holiday.

Holidays: observed days and substitute days

When a fixed-date holiday lands on a weekend, most countries move the day off rather than lose it — but the rule differs:

• US federal: a Saturday holiday is observed on the Friday before, a Sunday holiday on the Monday after. That means New Year's Day 2028 (a Saturday) is observed on Friday 31 December 2027 — a holiday that shows up in the previous year.
• UK bank holidays: a weekend holiday gets a “substitute day”, always the next weekday that isn't already a holiday. When Christmas Day is a Sunday, Boxing Day stays on Monday 26th and Christmas moves to Tuesday 27th.
• Scotland has its own list: 2 January and St Andrew's Day are bank holidays, Easter Monday isn't, and the summer holiday is the first Monday of August rather than the last.

Private employers and US states may close on extra days (the day after Thanksgiving, for example) or open on federal holidays, so treat a public calendar as a starting point and adjust it to the organisation you're counting for.

Working days in each month of 2026

2026 has 261 weekdays. The US loses 11 to federal holidays and England & Wales loses 8 to bank holidays. For Scotland, other years or a different work week, use “Days in a year” in the calculator.

The same calculation in Excel or Google Sheets

Put your holiday dates in a range (say H2:H12) and use:

For a different work week use the .INTL versions with a seven-character weekend code, Monday first, where 1 means a day off. A Sunday–Thursday week (Friday and Saturday off) is "0000110"; a Monday–Saturday week is "0000001". The calculator prints the exact formula for whatever you've selected, so you can paste it into a sheet and compare.

Where business-day counts matter

• Payment terms. “Net 30” usually means calendar days; “30 business days” is about six weeks. When you send a quote or invoice, spell out which — the Quotation Generator has a payment-terms field for this.
• Notice periods and HR. Leave requests and probation reviews are often counted in working days; part-timers may need a custom work week.
• Delivery promises. A “5 business day” estimate placed on a Wednesday before a bank-holiday weekend can be ten calendar days.
• Calendar-day questions. If weekends don't matter, use the Date Difference Calculator instead.