Count the Working Days Inside a Notice Period — Free
Calendar weeks are not working weeks. Before you promise handover dates or book a start date, count the days your notice period actually holds — weekends out, your holidays out, end date exclusive.
The proof surface
Notice-period planners lay out handover steps by date. This ladder counts instead: weekdays inside each supplied half-open period under an explicit five- or six-day week model, minus holidays you name. It does not interpret contract terms or tell you when notice takes effect.
InputPeriod code | start YYYY-MM-DD | end YYYY-MM-DD | holiday dates or none; weekly working-day model: 5 (sat+sun off) or 6 (sun off)
Rare deviceNotice-period planners lay out handover steps by date. This ladder counts instead: weekdays inside each supplied half-open period under an explicit five- or six-day week model, minus holidays you name. It does not interpret contract terms or tell you when notice takes effect.
Output artifactWorking days in period with row-by-row context
Cost$0 local calculation · no card, paid key, subscription or signup · proposed filing price is not for sale
Sample, not your facts: Illustrative inputs: Notice | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-13 | none; Handover | 2026-11-16 | 2026-11-20 | 2026-11-18. Weekly working-day model: 5 (Sat+Sun off) or 6 (Sun off) = 5. Working days in period: 12 working days. All records are invented.
Before using the working-day ladder
Dates use ISO YYYY-MM-DD and are treated as one local calendar — the tool does not convert time zones. Each period includes its start date and excludes its end date; if you mean to include the final day, enter the following day as the end. The weekly model is yours to choose: five means Saturday and Sunday are non-working, six means only Sunday is. Holiday dates must be entered explicitly, one row's holidays apply only to that row, and a holiday outside the row's span is reported in the row note rather than silently applied. Shift patterns, on-call days and part-time weeks are outside the model; if your working week is neither five nor six consecutive-ish days, this count is only a starting approximation.
Why the flat version breaks
Counting calendar days as working days
Fourteen calendar days contain ten working days under a five-day week, not fourteen. Promising a handover in 'two weeks of working days' and then counting calendar days quietly stretches or shrinks the plan. Use the ladder's count, and keep the calendar-day total visible as a separate number.
Including the end date twice or not at all
Different workplaces phrase the last day differently. This tool fixes one convention — end date exclusive — and shows its workings, so convert your dates into that convention before entering them. If you are unsure which day is legally the last, confirm with the contract or HR rather than nudging dates to compensate.
Borrowing another country's holiday list
Public holidays differ by country, region and even industry, and substituted bank-holiday Mondays move year to year. Enter only the dates that actually apply to your workplace; a plausible-looking list from elsewhere will silently change the count.
How to work the working-day ladder
Pin down the two boundary dates first
Establish when notice starts and the date you treat as the end, using your contract and any confirmation in writing. Keep those source messages privately. Enter the day after your actual last working day as the end date so the exclusive boundary lands where you expect.
Choose the weekly model deliberately
Select five if your normal week excludes Saturday and Sunday, six if only Sunday is out. The model is an explicit switch, not a detection: the tool cannot read your roster. If your pattern rotates, split the period at pattern boundaries and use one row per segment.
List holidays inside each period
Add the specific dates that are non-working for you — public holidays, site closures, agreed leave — separated by semicolons, or write none. Check each date lands inside its row's span; the note will tell you if one was ignored. Do not import another year's holiday list without checking the weekdays.
Use the count to schedule, then verify
Map handover milestones onto the working days the ladder reports, and sanity-check the result against a physical calendar — a two-week period should land near ten working days under the five-day model. Ask HR or your manager which dates they are counting from; a shared count prevents the classic 'we thought different things' last week.
What the working-day ladder separates
Question
Before
Inspect this instead
Counting calendar days as working days
Fourteen calendar days contain ten working days under a five-day week, not fourteen. Promising a handover in 'two weeks of working days' and then counting calendar days quietly stretches or shrinks the plan. Use the ladder's count, and keep the calendar-day total visible as a separate number.
Choose the weekly model deliberately
Including the end date twice or not at all
Different workplaces phrase the last day differently. This tool fixes one convention — end date exclusive — and shows its workings, so convert your dates into that convention before entering them. If you are unsure which day is legally the last, confirm with the contract or HR rather than nudging dates to compensate.
List holidays inside each period
Borrowing another country's holiday list
Public holidays differ by country, region and even industry, and substituted bank-holiday Mondays move year to year. Enter only the dates that actually apply to your workplace; a plausible-looking list from elsewhere will silently change the count.
Use the count to schedule, then verify
This working-day ladder replaces a manual count or calculation, not source verification or the responsible person’s review.
Run it on the samples, right here
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HYPOTHESIS / PROTOTYPE — checkout unavailable. Calculation is local. A draft is saved automatically in this browser profile when storage is available; Reset to sample clears it. Optional Pro history stores only five summaries and has its own deletion control. State links encode your inputs and can remain in browser history, clipboard or recipients’ records; share only non-sensitive rows. Optional external AI formatting leaves this device. The required site analytics beacon reports page activity; shared URLs contain encoded inputs. Do not treat an encoded URL as private. The calculator has no input-collection endpoint.
Date arithmetic only, not legal or contractual advice. Confirm notice start, last working day and applicable holidays with your contract, HR or a qualified adviser before acting on the count.
Data note: The working-day ladder processes Period code | start YYYY-MM-DD | end YYYY-MM-DD | holiday dates or none locally. Starter/sample selection and Run compute in this tab; no input is sent by the calculator. A local draft may be saved; explicit state-link sharing or optional external AI formatting can disclose inputs. Use non-sensitive labels.
Go deeper: the companion app files the same reading as a climbing rung ladder
The article demo above runs without limits. The companion app keeps a local history, exports the rows as CSV, prints the working-day ladder reading, and holds your drafts on this device — one complete free app run; the proposed $4 one-time filing layer is not for sale.
The working-day ladder answer stays complete for free. The proposed $4 one-time filing layer adds row CSV, print and five local reading summaries, not hidden answers. Checkout is unavailable; the article demo remains unlimited.
Date arithmetic only, not legal or contractual advice. Confirm notice start, last working day and applicable holidays with your contract, HR or a qualified adviser before acting on the count.
What this is built on
Method: Add the specific dates that are non-working for you — public holidays, site closures, agreed leave — separated by semicolons, or write none. Check each date lands inside its row's span; the note will tell you if one was ignored. Do not import another year's holiday list without checking the weekdays.
All sample records, dates, quantities and labels are invented. No outside policy, contract, rate, clock offset, measurement or accessibility standard is represented as verified.
Google’s official pricing documentation, fetched 2026-10-01, says AI Studio is free in available regions. Optional formatting may require a Google account; manual local entry requires none. Limits can change and free-tier content may be used to improve products. Do not send private records.
Before: a notice period was a block of calendar weeks. After: it is a counted ladder of working days with weekends and holidays visibly removed.
Setting: Weekly working-day model: 5 (Sat+Sun off) or 6 (Sun off) = 5. Expected summary: 12 working days.
The notice span from Monday 2 November up to but excluding Friday 13 November contains eleven calendar days; under the five-day model the two weekend days drop out, leaving nine working days. The handover span 16–20 November holds four weekdays inside the half-open range, and the supplied 18 November holiday removes one, leaving three. The ladder total is nine plus three, twelve working days. The end date is exclusive, matching a last working day that falls on 12 November in the first period.
Sample B — changed plan
Short | 2026-12-01 | 2026-12-04 | 2026-12-02
Setting: Weekly working-day model: 5 (Sat+Sun off) or 6 (Sun off) = 5. Expected summary: 2 working days.
The span covers 1, 2 and 3 December 2026 — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The supplied holiday removes Wednesday the 2nd, leaving two working days. Note how much a single midweek date moves a short period; the same span without the holiday would count three.
Sample C — boundary convention
Same day | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-01 | none
Setting: Weekly working-day model: 5 (Sat+Sun off) or 6 (Sun off) = 5. Expected summary: 0 working days.
Start and end coincide, so the half-open range is empty and the count is zero. This boundary is a counting convention, not a claim that nothing happens on that date — an exit interview or final shift on 1 October would still occur; it simply occupies no additional working days under this rule. Equal dates are accepted rather than rejected so a same-day boundary stays visible.
Optional AI formatting, never the calculation
Manual entry completes this working-day ladder for free without signup. If available to you, the free AI Studio interface linked in the sources may format fictional or non-sensitive notes; external access may require an account. No API key or AI call is built into this tool. Free-tier content may be used to improve products. Review each cell and transcribe it to the labeled row schema; do not paste the JSON object into the row box.
Format only these fictional or non-sensitive notes for a working-day ladder. Return strict JSON shaped as {"rows": [{"label": "string", "cells": ["string", "string", "string"]}], "setting": "string"}. The columns are Period code | start YYYY-MM-DD | end YYYY-MM-DD | holiday dates or none; the setting is Weekly working-day model: 5 (Sat+Sun off) or 6 (Sun off). Keep all supplied strings and quantities exactly; do not calculate, infer missing entries, invent dates or add advice. If any required value is missing, return an empty rows array and ask me for it separately. I will verify every cell against my source and manually transcribe rows using vertical bars before running the local calculator.
An AI response is not executed, fetched or trusted as a result. Missing values remain questions; the strict local parser checks the rows you actually enter.