Project each truck's next service date with EDATE, then flag which ones are overdue
EDATE steps a date forward by a whole number of months and keeps the same day of the month it started on, which is what a service interval needs and EOMONTH's flattening to month-end would get wrong.
Task:
You manage fleet maintenance for a regional logistics company. Each truck runs on a fixed service interval, and its next service falls on the same day of the month as its last one did, just some months later — it isn't rounded to month-end the way a billing cycle might be. In column D, use EDATE to project each truck's next due date from its last service date in column B and its interval in column C. In column E, use IF to compare that due date against today's review date, October 3, 2026, and mark the truck "Overdue" if the due date has already passed, or "On Track" if it hasn't. Fill in rows 2 through 5.
Interactive Spreadsheet
Hints
+5 XPno-hints bonusSolve it on your own to keep the bonus. Each hint gets one step closer to the formula.
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 | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Truck | Last Service | Interval (Months) | Next Due Date | Status |
| 2 | T-12 | 4/10/2026 | 6 | ||
| 3 | T-18 | 1/15/2026 | 3 | ||
| 4 | T-23 | 7/22/2026 | 6 | ||
| 5 | T-31 | 2/28/2026 | 4 |
What this exercise teachesMay contain the answer
EDATE(B2,6) takes T-12's last service date, April 10, 2026, and steps it forward exactly six months to October 10, 2026 — the 10th survives the trip because EDATE preserves the day of the month, the opposite of EOMONTH, which would have flattened the result to September 30. T-31 shows why that matters at a month boundary: February 28, 2026 plus a four-month step lands on June 28, 2026, not on some date forced onto a month's last day. Once column D holds each truck's projected due date, IF(D2<"10/3/2026","Overdue","On Track") just asks whether that date falls before the review date: T-18's due date of April 15, 2026 and T-31's of June 28, 2026 both come before October 3 and read Overdue, while T-12's October 10, 2026 and T-23's January 22, 2027 are both still ahead of the review date and read On Track.