How to Add Business Days with WORKDAY in Excel

Add or subtract working days with WORKDAY: ready dates, latest drop-off dates, and rolling weekend orders to Monday.

You will learn to

• Add business days to a date
• Count business days backwards from a deadline
• Move weekend dates to the next business day

How it works

WORKDAY(start_date, days) returns the date that is a number of working days (Monday to Friday) after the start date, skipping Saturdays and Sundays. The start date itself is not counted, so WORKDAY on a Friday with 1 day returns the next Monday.

Use a negative number of days to count backwards — for example, the latest date a job can start to be ready by a deadline. A handy trick: =WORKDAY(date-1,1) returns the date itself on a weekday, or the following Monday when the date is on a weekend.

=WORKDAY(B2,C2)