How to count the working days in a month
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3How many business days a given month has — for capacity planning, quotas, and billing.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel | =NETWORKDAYS(A2,EOMONTH(A2,0)) | A2 = any date in the month. EOMONTH(A2,0) is that month's last day; NETWORKDAYS skips weekends. |
| Google Sheets | =NETWORKDAYS(A2,EOMONTH(A2,0)) | Identical. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =NETWORKDAYS(A2,EOMONTH(A2,0)) | Identical. |
How it works
NETWORKDAYS counts weekdays (Mon-Fri) between two dates inclusive, and EOMONTH(A2,0) gives the last day of the month, so pairing them with the first of the month counts every working day it contains: August 2026 has 21. To count from the first properly, pass DATE(YEAR(A2),MONTH(A2),1) as the start rather than an arbitrary mid-month date. Add a range of public holidays as NETWORKDAYS' third argument to exclude them, or use NETWORKDAYS.INTL if your weekend isn't Saturday-Sunday. Dividing a monthly target by this count gives a required daily run-rate.
Verified, not just documented
We ran =NETWORKDAYS(DATE(2026,8,1),EOMONTH(DATE(2026,8,1),0)) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 21 — exactly the expected result. Every formula here is confirmed by actually executing it.