Schedule onboarding tasks a fixed number of working days from a start date
WORKDAY steps a set number of working days forward or backward from a date, skipping weekends automatically, so the answer doesn't shift depending on which day of the week the anchor date happens to fall on.
Task:
You coordinate onboarding logistics for a mid-size company's IT department. Equipment has to be configured and tested 3 working days before each new hire's start date, and their manager intro call gets scheduled 2 working days after. For the three new hires below, use WORKDAY to work out the equipment-ready deadline in column C and the manager intro date in column D.
Learning Objectives:
- Use WORKDAY to move a fixed number of working days forward or backward from a date
- Enter a negative day count when the date being calculated falls before the start date, not after it
- See why counting working days instead of calendar days changes the answer whenever a weekend falls in between
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 | Equipment Ready By | Manager Intro Scheduled |
| 2 | Amara Osei | 10/5/2026 | ||
| 3 | Diego Fernandez | 10/9/2026 | ||
| 4 | Priya Nair | 10/14/2026 |
What this exercise teaches (contains the answer)
WORKDAY(B2,-3) starts at Amara's Monday, October 5 start date and steps backward one working day at a time, skipping Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th entirely rather than treating them as usable days — three working days back lands on Wednesday, September 30, not Friday, October 2, which is what plain subtraction would give. WORKDAY(B3,2) shows the same skip running forward: Diego's Friday, October 9 start date plus two working days has to pass over the Saturday and Sunday right after it, landing on Tuesday, October 13 rather than the Sunday two calendar days would reach. Priya's Wednesday, October 14 start crosses a weekend going backward the same way Amara's does, putting her equipment deadline on Friday, October 9. All of this comes from just a start date and a signed count of working days — negative to go backward, positive to go forward — so nobody has to check a calendar for where the weekend falls before trusting the date WORKDAY returns.