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Time, dates and shifts

Add business days to a date

Add business days to a date

Start on a date, move forward or backward a stated number of working days, and land on the date that comes out — with the weekends and holidays that were stepped over.

How this is calculated

Days are stepped one at a time and only the working ones are counted, so a start date that is itself a holiday consumes no days. The starting day is not counted as day one — one working day after a Monday is a Tuesday.

  • Where a rule says "within 30 days" it usually means calendar days, and where it says "30 working days" the weekly off matters. This tool answers the second question only.
  • A deadline that lands on a day the office is shut is generally read as the next working day. That is a rule about the specific statute, not arithmetic, so it is not applied here.

A deadline stated in working days, run forward or backward one day at a time: the date it lands on, the calendar days that were travelled and the offs and holidays that were stepped over.

Why the calendar span is longer than the number of days

Fifteen working days across a normal week is 21 calendar days, because two weekend days fall inside it roughly every fifth day. The gap between the two figures is the entire reason a deadline in working days is quoted that way — it stops the clock while the office is shut.

The page prints the calendar days travelled alongside the date, so a reader who was told “15 working days” can see that it was never a promise of three weeks.

The starting day is not day one

One working day after a Monday is a Tuesday. A rule that counts the day of service as the first day — which some do, in the shape of “within 7 days from the date of the order” — is counting calendar days and belongs on the date difference page instead.

Backwards works on the same basis: the tool steps back day by day and consumes only working days, so a date seven working days before a Monday lands on the previous Tuesday, having skipped two weekends.

Questions readers ask

What if the deadline lands on a holiday?

It cannot, on this arithmetic: the walk only consumes working days, so the date it reports is a working day by construction. Whether an act done on the next working day is treated as done in time is a rule of the statute in question and is not decided here.

Do I have to list every holiday?

Only the ones inside the span you are walking. Dates outside it are ignored and the tool tells you how many of the dates you pasted were actually used, which is how a typo in a year shows up before it misdates a filing.

Can it add calendar days instead?

Choose “no weekly off” and leave the holiday list empty: the walk then consumes every day, which is exactly adding calendar days. That is a useful way to see how much the offs are actually costing you on a given deadline.

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