Counting business days without counting them
Notice periods, delivery windows, invoice terms and statutory deadlines are nearly always written in business days, and working one out by hand means opening a calendar and counting squares. Pick two dates and the number is there — weekends gone, public holidays gone, both ends of the range included.
The awkward case is a holiday landing on a Saturday. It has already been removed as a weekend, so removing it again as a holiday takes off a day that was never there. That is the mistake most spreadsheet formulas make, and it is why aNETWORKDAYSresult sometimes disagrees with the calendar on your wall.
From working days to working hours
A month is not a number of hours until the weekends and holidays are out and what remains is multiplied by the day you actually work. Do that for a quarter in your head and you will be a day or two out — which at any real rate is the difference between a quote you are happy with and one you regret.
Set your standard day once and everything follows: the hours, and the money if you add a rate. Individual days can differ without breaking the total — a half day before a holiday, a Saturday you agreed to cover, a Tuesday you took off.
Planning a period, or recording one
This page answers what a period is worth. If you need what actually happened — clock in and out times, sessions that run past midnight, several sittings in a day — that is the timesheet, and it keeps its own records. The two never write to each other, so an estimate cannot overwrite a timesheet you might invoice from.
Common questions
What counts as a business day?
Monday to Friday, minus public holidays. Both are excluded by default and either can be switched back on — useful if you work Saturdays, or if a contract counts calendar days rather than working ones.
Are both the start and end date included?
Yes. Selecting 1 to 5 August counts five days, not four. Notice periods and payment terms are written inclusively, so that is the behaviour that matches the paperwork.
What happens when a public holiday falls on a weekend?
It is subtracted once, not twice. A day already excluded as a weekend is not excluded again as a holiday — a common off-by-one, and the reason a manual NETWORKDAYS formula sometimes disagrees with the calendar on your wall.
How do I get working hours rather than days?
Set your standard working day and every figure follows from it. Seven and a half hours, six, four on a part-time contract — the hours total, and the earnings if you add a rate, are derived from that one number.
Can I see what a period is worth before quoting it?
Yes. Choose the months a project will run, set your hourly rate, and the total is the gross value of the working time inside it. Add a tax or VAT percentage and net appears beside gross.
What about days I only work half of?
Give that day its own hours. The rest of the range keeps the standard day and the total accounts for the difference, so a fortnight containing two half days is not counted as a fortnight of full ones.
Which countries are supported?
Over forty, with regional variation where it exists. Holidays are fetched for the year you are looking at rather than read from a fixed list, so a moving date such as Easter is handled correctly.
Is this the same as recording hours I actually worked?
No, and the difference matters. This values a period at your standard day, which is a forecast. The timesheet records what happened. Both exist here and are kept deliberately separate, so a plan can never quietly rewrite a record.