Summary

The Excel WORKDAY function returns a date that is a given number of working days before or after a start date. It automatically skips Saturdays, Sundays, and any optional holiday dates you provide.

This makes WORKDAY useful for due dates, delivery estimates, project milestones, invoice deadlines, and SLA calculations where business days matter more than calendar days.

Syntax

=WORKDAY(start_date, days, [holidays])

start_date is the date you begin from. days is the number of working days to move. Positive values move forward, negative values move backward, and the optional holidays argument lets you skip extra dates that should not count as workdays.

Arguments

• start_date - The starting date for the calculation.
• days - The number of workdays to move forward or backward.
• holidays - [optional] A range or array of dates to exclude from the workday calendar.

WORKDAY vs Related Functions

These functions are related, but they solve different scheduling problems.

Use WORKDAY when you know the number of business days and need the resulting date. Use NETWORKDAYS when you already know the start and end dates and want to count the business days between them.

Using WORKDAY

WORKDAY always assumes Saturday and Sunday are weekends. If that matches your schedule, it is a simple way to calculate realistic deadlines. If your weekend pattern is different, use WORKDAY.INTL instead.

A helpful detail is that the count moves from the start date to the next valid workday. So if you start on Thursday and add 5, Excel counts the next five working days after that start date. Microsoft also notes that if the days argument is not an integer, it is truncated.

Holidays make the result more realistic. A date in the holiday list is skipped even if it falls on a normal weekday. For reliable results, Microsoft recommends entering dates with DATE(...) or by using valid Excel date values instead of ambiguous text dates.

Example 1 - Add Business Days to a Start Date

This is the basic use of WORKDAY: calculate a due date by moving forward a set number of working days.

=WORKDAY("2026-01-01", 5)

This skips Saturday and Sunday automatically, so the result lands on the fifth business day after the start date rather than simply five calendar days later.

Example 2 - Exclude a Holiday

Add a holiday range when one or more weekdays should not count as working days.

=WORKDAY("2026-01-01", 5, H1)

If H1 contains 2026-01-02, Excel skips that date in addition to the weekend. This is a practical pattern for company closures and public holidays.

Example 3 - Test a Deadline Against a Cutoff

WORKDAY can also feed directly into a TRUE/FALSE test.

=WORKDAY(B1, 10) < DATE(2026, 3, 1)

This checks whether the calculated deadline stays before a target date. It is useful for SLA monitoring, milestone checks, and deadline alerts.

Example 4 - Build a Due-Date Label

You can wrap WORKDAY inside TEXT when you want a formatted result inside a message.

="Due: " & TEXT(WORKDAY(B1, 5), "yyyy-mm-dd")

This is helpful for dashboards, exported labels, and user-facing summaries where a plain serial number would not be readable.

Conclusion Recap

• Summary: WORKDAY returns a date based on business-day counting.
• Weekend rule: It automatically skips Saturdays and Sundays.
• Holiday support: You can pass a holiday list to skip extra non-working dates.
• Best use: Due dates, shipping estimates, milestones, and SLA deadlines.
• Important limit: If the weekend is not Saturday-Sunday, use WORKDAY.INTL instead.
• Input tip: Use real Excel dates or DATE(...) for reliable results.