Introduction

The WORKDAY function in Smartsheet is a powerful tool designed to calculate future or past workdays, excluding weekends and customizable holiday dates. This function is invaluable for project managers, HR teams, and anyone who deals with schedules and deadlines. By simplifying date calculations, it helps you focus on managing your project efficiently rather than worrying about dealing with manual date adjustments.

Practical Uses

There are many real-world scenarios where the WORKDAY function is particularly useful:

• Setting realistic project deadlines by skipping weekends and holidays.
• Generating employee schedules and ensuring accurate calculations for remaining workdays in a cycle.
• Forecasting task completion dates for client deliverables or internal reporting.

Sample Example

Suppose you have a start date of October 2, 2023, and you need to calculate the deadline after 10 working days. Additionally, let’s assume your company observes October 9, 2023 as a holiday. Using the WORKDAY function, the output will accurately skip weekends and the holiday to generate a completion date of October 17, 2023.

Step-by-Step Guide

Follow these steps to use the WORKDAY function in Smartsheet or Excel:

1. In your Smartsheet column, select the formula field where you want to calculate the end date based on workdays.
2. Enter the formula as follows: =WORKDAY(start_date, num_days, [holidays]), replacing start_date with a cell reference or date, num_days with the number of working days, and [holidays] with a range that lists custom holidays.
3. For example, =WORKDAY(“10/2/2023”, 10, {“10/9/2023”}) will result in 10/17/2023.
4. Press Enter to see the calculated date, accurately skipping non-working days.

Tips and Tricks

• Customize holidays: Always update your holiday list so results reflect the correct non-working days for your organization.
• Test small datasets: Before applying the formula to large sheets, test it on a small set of data to ensure accuracy.
• Avoid leaving holidays blank: If you omit the holidays argument, the function will not account for organizational rules, leading to potential inaccuracies.

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