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WORKDAY

Dates

Land a due date on a day someone can actually pay — terms counted in working days, not calendar ones.

Difficulty

Amateur

Excel file

1What is it?

Net 30 from the 15th is the 14th of next month, which might be a Sunday. WORKDAY starts from a date and counts forward (or back) a number of WORKING days, skipping weekends and any holidays you supply, so the date it returns is one a bank is open on. WORKDAY.INTL takes the same weekend argument as NETWORKDAYS.INTL. Note that the start date itself is never counted — day 1 is the next working day — which is the opposite of NETWORKDAYS and the single most common surprise.

2What it looks like

WORKDAY(start_date, days, [holidays])   ·   WORKDAY.INTL(start, days, [weekend], [holidays])

start_date: Where to count from. NOT counted itself.
days: How many working days forward. Negative counts backwards, which is how you find a cut-off.
[holidays]: Dates to skip, same as NETWORKDAYS.
[weekend] (.INTL only): A non-standard working week.

3When you use it

Set an invoice due date that doesn't land on a weekend.
Work backwards from month-end to find the last day to submit something.
Schedule a payment run a fixed number of working days after approval.

4See it in action

Change the inputs — the formula and result update live. Prefer the real thing? Download the Excel file and open it in Excel.

Net terms counted in working days. The naive answer can land on a Sunday.

=WORKDAY(B1, B2)Naive +30 days: 2026-10-15 — a Thursday

	A
1	Result
2	Naive +30 days: 2026-10-15 — a Thursday
3	WORKDAY: 2026-10-27 — a Tuesday
4	The start date is never counted: day 1 is the next working day

The lime cell holds the formula — click it (or any cell) to see its contents in the bar above, just like Excel. Edit the blue cells to watch it recompute.

Invoice date

Terms (working days)

5Common errors

Off by one against a hand countThe start date isn't counted — day 1 is the day after.

Fix: That's the design, and it's opposite to NETWORKDAYS. Count from the day after when checking by hand.

Result shows as a 5-digit numberThe cell isn't formatted as a date.

Fix: Excel returns a serial number; format the cell, or wrap in TEXT for a label.

#NUM!The result falls outside Excel's date range, usually from a huge negative days argument.

Fix: Check the sign and the magnitude of days.

6Better functions & alternatives

NETWORKDAYS — The inverse: count the working days between two dates you already have.
EDATE / EOMONTH — For terms expressed in months rather than days — these don't skip weekends.

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