How to use the Excel WORKDAY function

Summary

The Excel WORKDAY function takes a date and returns the nearest working day in the future or past, based on an offset value you provide. You can use the WORKDAY function to calculate things like ship dates, delivery dates, and completion dates that need to take into account working and non-working days.

Purpose

Get a date n working days in the future or past

Return value

A serial number representing a particular date in Excel.

Syntax

=WORKDAY (start_date, days, [holidays])

Arguments

start_date - The date from which to start.
days - The working days before or after start_date.
holidays - [optional] A list dates that should be considered non-work days.

Usage notes

The WORKDAY function figures out a date that represents the "nearest" working day N days in the past or future. WORKDAY can be used to calculate due dates, delivery dates, and other dates that should exclude non-working days.

Use a positive number for days to calculate future dates, and a negative number for past dates.

Note: WORKDAY does not include the start date date as a work day when it calculates the end date.

Weekends

By default, WORKDAY will exclude weekends (Saturday and Sunday) . If you need to customize which days of the week are considered weekend days, use the more robust WORKDAY.INTL function.

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