Business Days Calculator

What Are Business Days?

Business days (also called working days) are Monday through Friday, excluding public holidays. In Australia, business days are used for legal deadlines, delivery estimates, processing times, and financial settlements.

When a contract, government form, or bank says "5 business days," they mean five working days — weekends and public holidays are skipped entirely.

Quick Reference: Business Days From Today

Counted with the public holidays of NSW. Change the state or territory above and this table follows it.

Business Days vs Calendar Days

The difference matters for deadlines. Here is a conversion guide:

Which Public Holidays This Calculator Skips

Public holidays in Australia are gazetted by each state and territory, not nationally. The same Monday can be a public holiday in one state and an ordinary working day across the border, which is why this calculator asks which state or territory you are in before it counts anything.

Only statewide holidays are skipped. Regional show days, district holidays and part-day evening holidays are real, but they close some workplaces and not others, so counting them here would give the wrong answer for most people. If one applies where you are, add it yourself.

Statewide public holidays, 2026

21 dates, read from the same records the calculator uses. Where the states use different names for the same day, each name is shown with the states that use it.

Statewide public holidays, 2027

22 dates. Two things are genuinely not gazetted yet and are therefore absent rather than estimated: Victoria's Friday before the AFL Grand Final, which waits on the 2027 season draw, and the Northern Territory's regional show days.

Each state's full list, including the regional and part-day holidays left out above, is on its own reference page: NSW, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory, or start at the public holidays hub.

Worked Examples

Every figure in this section was produced by the same code the calculator runs, using the same holiday records. Where the states disagree, the answer is shown for each group rather than averaged into one number that would be wrong for most readers.

Adding business days

The start date is never counted; counting begins the next day. Weekends and public holidays are stepped over without using up any of the count.

Monday 20 April 2026, plus 10 business days

Anzac Day falls on Saturday 25 April in 2026. NSW, WA and the ACT gazette an additional public holiday on Monday 27 April; VIC, QLD, SA, TAS and the NT do not. Queensland and the Northern Territory still land on Tuesday 5 May, but for a different reason: both have a holiday on Monday 4 May — Labour Day in Queensland, May Day in the Territory. Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania have neither, so they land a day earlier, on Monday 4 May.

Monday 1 June 2026, plus 5 business days

The King's Birthday is observed on Monday 8 June in NSW, VIC, SA, TAS, the ACT and the NT, so counting steps over it and lands on Tuesday 9 June. Queensland observes it on 5 October and Western Australia on 28 September, so for them 8 June is an ordinary Monday and the answer is Monday 8 June. One input, two correct answers, depending on where you are.

Monday 21 September 2026, plus 5 business days

Western Australia's King's Birthday falls on Monday 28 September 2026, by proclamation, so a Western Australian lands on Tuesday 29 September. Everywhere else lands on Monday 28 September. This one date is the clearest argument for choosing your state before you count.

Counting business days between two dates

Counting is exclusive of the start date and inclusive of the end date, which makes it the exact inverse of adding. Count the business days between a date and the date you got by adding ten, and you get ten back.

Why every state agrees on the Easter row

Monday 30 March to Tuesday 14 April 2026 is 15 calendar days. Four of them are weekend days, and the Easter holidays cover 3 to 6 April. The states genuinely disagree here — Tasmania gazettes neither Easter Saturday nor Easter Sunday, and Western Australia gazettes only the Sunday — but in 2026 both of those days fall on a weekend, so they were never going to be counted anyway. Every state lands on nine business days.

Why April splits the states

Wednesday 1 April to Thursday 30 April 2026 is the same 29 calendar days everywhere, but not the same number of working days. NSW, WA and the ACT lose Monday 27 April to the additional Anzac Day holiday and come out at 18 business days. The rest come out at 19.

How We Work This Out

The method, in plain English

We count in whole days. Starting from the date you enter, we step forward one day at a time and count only business days — Monday to Friday, skipping any public holiday that applies in the state or territory you picked. The day you start on is not counted; counting begins the next day. Weekends and public holidays are stepped over without using up any of your count, so a deadline that lands on a long weekend simply moves to the next working day.

What we assume

• Public holidays vary by state and territory, and some vary by town. We use the holidays for the jurisdiction you select.
• Regional and part-day holidays are not included. Queensland show days, Tasmania's district holidays, the Northern Territory's show days and the part-day evening holidays on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve affect some people and not others, and we would rather leave them out than apply them to the wrong person.
• The start date is not counted. A contract signed on a Monday with a five-business-day deadline is counted from the Tuesday.
• A fixed Monday-to-Friday week. There is no option for a six-day or four-day week.
• Substitute days are included where the state gazettes them — for example Monday 27 April 2026 in NSW, WA and the ACT, because Anzac Day falls on a Saturday.
• We do not know your industry's own calendar. Some awards, courts and government bodies count deadlines differently, and some close on days that are not public holidays.
• This is a date calculation, not legal advice. If a deadline carries legal or financial consequences, confirm it with the body that set it — some rules count calendar days, some count clear days, and some have their own definition of a business day.

Dates and time zones

Every date is handled as a plain calendar date, with no time of day and no time zone. 30 June is 30 June wherever you are reading from, and a daylight-saving changeover cannot shift a result by a day.

Which years we hold

Holidays shown for: 2026 and 2027. Last checked: 19 September 2026.

If your calculation runs past 31 December 2027, the calculator says so on the result rather than quietly treating an unknown year's public holidays as working days. We would rather tell you the answer may be a little early than hand you a confident wrong date.

Where our holiday dates come from

Each jurisdiction below was checked against that government's own published list. Where two of our own pages disagreed, the government source settled it, and the change is recorded on that jurisdiction's reference page.

Need Calendar Days Instead?