PlanMaker WORKDAY Function: Count Business Days to a Date

WORKDAY returns a date a chosen number of working days before or after a given start date. It omits Saturdays and Sundays, plus optional holidays supplied explicitly. Unlike StartDate+9, which counts nine calendar days, WORKDAY advances over weekdays. The result is a date value: if the output cell shows a plain number, apply a date format.

If you need the count of eligible workdays between two known dates, choose NETWORKDAYS instead. If your staff considers Friday/Saturday or Sunday/Monday the weekend, see WORKDAY.INTL; that is a separate function whose optional weekend parameter must not be passed to ordinary WORKDAY.

=WORKDAY(StartDate, Days [, Holidays])

The 2026 PlanMaker reference documents these three parameters, including the optional holiday list and direction for positive/negative offsets. No default is supplied for Days; it is required. It does not explicitly define noninteger Days, a zero offset on a weekend, or exact error messages; these cases should be tested natively, not inferred from Excel.

English help uses commas. Locale-specific separators may differ, so use PlanMaker’s Insert Function dialog if a copied formula does not parse. Local date entry can differ (03/04/2024 is ambiguous); worksheets below use DATE(year,month,day). SoftMaker’s data-entry reference explains that dates are stored numerically and can be formatted for display.

In a blank worksheet, enter:

Apply a date format to A2, C2, D2, H2. Both results match SoftMaker’s PlanMaker 2026 example after replacing locale-sensitive text dates with unambiguous DATE inputs; the outcome was independently calculated, not natively observed. The 2021/2024 manuals give the same example pattern using October 2016.

Count the nine days yourself with no holiday: Oct 3 (1), 4 (2), 5 (3), 6 (4), 7 (5), 10 (6), 11 (7), 12 (8), 13 (9). If Oct 3 is excluded, start counting on Oct 4 and the ninth workday moves to Oct 14.

These follow the documented weekday/holiday exclusion rule but are independent Gregorian expectations. If your business observes Christmas, December 25 does not disappear automatically; you must list it among holidays.

Include a region-specific holiday calendar

For a payment deadline, set A2=DATE(2024,6,14), B2=5, and H2=DATE(2024,6,19) as your example excluded holiday. Use:

=WORKDAY(A2,B2,$H$2:$H$2)

Without a holiday list, the expected due date is Friday, June 21, 2024. Excluding the Wednesday 19th shifts it to Monday, June 24, 2024. This is a deliberately chosen hypothetical exclusion—not a claim that every location observes a holiday on June 19. Holiday calendars vary by jurisdiction and employer.

Keep a shared holiday range fixed in a task table

List start dates in A2:A50, required business days in B2:B50 and holiday dates in H2:H20. Enter in C2 and fill down:

=WORKDAY(A2,B2,$H$2:$H$20)

The absolute $H$2:$H$20 prevents moving the exclusion list when copied to subsequent rows. When the source values change, the computed due dates will be recalculated according to the spreadsheet’s calculation settings; no live PlanMaker runtime was tested in this research.

Calendar days, workdays and end dates are different concepts

=DATE(2024,6,14)+5 means five calendar days later (June 19). =WORKDAY(DATE(2024,6,14),5) means five weekdays later (June 21). And =NETWORKDAYS(DATE(2024,6,14),DATE(2024,6,21)) counts six included weekdays, because it includes the initial Friday as well as the final Friday. Choosing the wrong function is a common source of one-day SLA errors.

Unverified native edge cases: zero Days on a weekend, fractional Days, holidays entered as text, duplicate dates, blank dates, out-of-range dates, and workbook conversion. For these, this guide provides no invented PlanMaker error outputs. SoftMaker’s date-entry reference specifies a normal date-entry range of 1900-01-01 through 2500-12-31; not a verified error for WORKDAY beyond that range.

• PlanMaker 2021/2024/2026: The official 2021, 2024 and 2026 manuals show the same core argument order and Saturday/Sunday/holidays logic. Their printed sample date years differ: older manuals use 2016, while the 2026 manual uses 2022. No native builds, mobile variants, edition-specific or NX tests were run.
• Excel: Microsoft WORKDAY describes the equivalent arguments, weekday skipping and optional holiday list. Excel explicitly states that noninteger days are truncated and documents error responses; the PlanMaker page does not explicitly say these things. Treat them as Excel-only documented behavior until PlanMaker is tested. The underlying date serial bases and localized input rules can differ.
• Dates vs times: These examples produce dates, not working-hour totals or time zone conversions. For holiday-aware partial-day scheduling, a dedicated business-hours model is required.

• SoftMaker PlanMaker 2026 — WORKDAY reference; checked 2026-10-12; syntax, direction, holidays and 2022 example.
• SoftMaker PlanMaker 2024 — WORKDAY reference; checked 2026-10-12; 2016 example, same syntax.
• SoftMaker PlanMaker 2021 — WORKDAY reference; checked 2026-10-12; 2016 example, same documented behavior.
• SoftMaker — Entering data and date values; checked 2026-10-12; date formats, range, numeric representation.
• Microsoft Excel — WORKDAY function; checked 2026-10-12; Excel-specific truncation and errors for compatibility comparison.

Verification status: Official documentation checked and example dates independently calculated. Not executed in PlanMaker. No simulated application screenshots are represented as native results.