Apple Numbers COUPNUM Function: Remaining Coupon Dates and Payment Counts

COUPNUM(settle, maturity, frequency, days-basis)

frequency is 1 for annual payments, 2 for semiannual payments or 4 for quarterly payments. It is not the total number of remaining coupons. Only days-basis is documented as optional. The function has no issue-date, first-coupon or last-coupon argument, so an irregular contractual schedule cannot be supplied explicitly.

Use date-valued cells or DATE(year,month,day) rather than ambiguous text such as 1/2/2026. Settlement is the trade’s settlement date, which need not be its trade date. Apple requires maturity to be later than settlement.

The optional final argument selects:

Basis 0 and basis 4 have different month-end rules. Agreement on the ordinary dates below does not make them interchangeable. The actual-day controls count elapsed calendar days; they do not add an extra day for including both endpoints. These examples do not establish every February-end adjustment or the treatment of a multi-year actual/actual interval.

In a small table, enter:

In E2 enter =COUPNUM(A2,B2,C2,D2). The independent expected count is 8. The full literal equivalent is:

=COUPNUM(DATE(2026,2,15),DATE(2028,1,15),4,0)

Work backward from maturity in three-month steps. The future dates, in order, are April 15, July 15 and October 15, 2026; January 15, April 15, July 15 and October 15, 2027; and January 15, 2028. The January 15, 2026 payment has already passed settlement.

Changing frequency to 2 gives 4 future dates: July 15, 2026; January 15 and July 15, 2027; January 15, 2028. Changing it to 1 gives 2, on January 15 of 2027 and 2028. These are distinct schedules, not just a formatting change.

With settlement August 15, 2026 and the same maturity, quarterly frequency leaves 6 dates; semiannual frequency leaves 3. With settlement January 1, 2028, quarterly frequency leaves 1, the January 15 maturity payment.

For the first quarterly example, omitting the final basis argument retains documented basis 0 and therefore the same independent count of 8. None of these controls places settlement exactly on a coupon date. The checked article does not spell out that boundary, so it is not inferred from a different spreadsheet.

Apple publishes settlement April 2, 2010, maturity December 31, 2015, quarterly payments and basis 1, with result 23. The first future coupon is June 30, 2010. The remaining 2010 dates contribute three payments; the five complete years 2011–2015 contribute twenty. Thus 3 + 5*4 = 23.

A locale-independent transcription is:

=COUPNUM(DATE(2010,4,2),DATE(2015,12,31),4,1)

This is a reconstruction of Apple’s published result, not an observed Numbers calculation. Counting the actual schedule avoids the unreliable shortcut of multiplying a rounded year fraction by frequency.

For a fictional face amount of 10000, a 6% annual coupon and four equal payments per year, each coupon is 10000*6%/4 = 150. Eight remaining coupons total 1200 in undiscounted coupon cash. A separate 10000 redemption would make the total future receipts 11200, assuming no other payments or contractual adjustments.

COUPNUM supplies only the count. It does not discount those receipts, calculate accrued interest or add redemption. Keep payment size, dates and principal separate so that the maturity coupon and principal are not confused.

Check the date order and use only the documented frequency values 1, 2 and 4. The source does not give an exhaustive error-code table for invalid frequencies, fractional arguments or equal dates. No such outcomes were tested here.

For an actual irregular first or final coupon, use its contractual schedule rather than treating this regular-schedule control as proof. Cross-application agreement on a few ordinary dates does not verify month-end handling or file-import behavior.

The official Apple COUPNUM reference was checked on October 18, 2026 in Formulas and Functions Help 15.4, within the Numbers 15.4 for Mac documentation context. The worked values in this guide are independent calculations; Apple’s published example is identified separately. No Numbers session or other spreadsheet calculation engine was executed. Cell-reference walkthroughs are instructions, not recorded application tests.

The first release introducing this function is unknown from the checked evidence. The current reference documents it; it does not label it deprecated or retired. Shared iWork documentation does not independently verify every platform, older release or import/export path.

• COUPDAYSNC
• PRICE
• DATE