Work out when equipment has to ship, counting backward from a start date
WORKDAY doesn't only project forward — a negative day count walks backward across business days just as well, which is exactly what a ship-by date needs.
Task:
You handle onboarding logistics for Alderbrook Consulting's IT department. Each new hire has a confirmed start date, and equipment needs enough lead time to arrive before they walk in — the shipping team wants a ship-by date that counts backward from the start date by the lead time in business days, skipping weekends. Work out each hire's ship-by date in column D.
Learning Objectives:
- Use WORKDAY's day argument negative to count backward from a date
- Recognize that business-day walks skip weekends in either direction
- Turn a start date and a lead time into a ship-by date without a calendar
Solve without hints for +5 XP
Interactive Spreadsheet
The data in this exercise
This is the grid you start with. Cell references in the task — B6, C2 — point at the row numbers and column letters below.
| A | B | C | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Hire | Start Date | Lead Time (Business Days) | Ship-By Date |
| 2 | Jordan Blake | 9/14/2026 | 3 | |
| 3 | Casey Nguyen | 9/21/2026 | 5 | |
| 4 | Priya Desai | 9/8/2026 | 2 |
What this exercise teaches (contains the answer)
WORKDAY(B2,-C2) steps three working days backward from September 14 — Friday the 11th, Thursday the 10th, Wednesday the 9th — landing on September 9 without ever counting the weekend in between. The same negative trick handles Casey's five-day lead time, which reaches back across a full weekend to September 14, and Priya's two-day lead time, which does the same over a shorter gap to September 4. A minus sign is the only difference from projecting a due date forward — WORKDAY does not care which direction it is walking, only that Saturday and Sunday never count as a step.