Teams & projects
Project completion date calculator
Enter when work starts, how many hours remain and how many hours a day go into it, and get the finish date with non-working days skipped.
The start date counts as day 1 if it is a working day. Public holidays are not skipped; add their hours to the work.
How the finish date is calculated
The calculator first converts the remaining effort into working days: hours of work ÷ hours per day, rounded up, since a part day still occupies that day. It then walks forward through the calendar from the start date, counting only the days you work (Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday, or every day) until that number is reached. The date it stops on is the completion date, and the difference between calendar days and working days shows how many weekends were skipped on the way.
Example: 120 hours of work at 6 hours a day is 120 ÷ 6 = 20 working days. Starting on a Monday with a five-day week, that is exactly four weeks of work, so the job ends on the Friday of the fourth week, 26 calendar days after the start (counting both ends) with 6 weekend days skipped. With a six-day week the same work finishes on the Tuesday of the fourth week, 23 calendar days in; working every day it takes 20. The result table also shows when you reach 25%, 50% and 75%, useful for check-in dates.
| Remaining work | Working days at 4 h/day | At 6 h/day | At 8 h/day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 h | 10 | 7 | 5 |
| 120 h | 30 | 20 | 15 |
| 300 h | 75 | 50 | 38 |
| 500 h | 125 | 84 | 63 |
Making the date realistic
The weak point is usually the hours per day. Very few people spend eight hours a day on one project: meetings, email, reviews and other work take a share, so 5 to 6 productive hours is a more common planning figure for a full-time person working on a single project, and less if they split their time. If several people work in parallel, enter their combined hours per day, but only for work that can genuinely be split between them.
Public holidays and planned leave are not removed automatically. Either add their hours to the remaining work or move the start date accordingly. The remaining-work figure should also include testing, review and fixes, which are the parts most often left out of an estimate. Treat the date as the earliest likely finish: if the estimate is uncertain, run it with a pessimistic number of hours as well and quote the range, or add a contingency of 10–20% before giving the date to a client.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate a project end date excluding weekends?
Divide the remaining hours by hours per day to get working days, round up, then count that many weekdays forward from the start date. 20 working days from a Monday ends on the Friday four weeks later.
Does the start date count as a working day?
Yes, if it falls on a working day the start date is day 1. If it is a weekend, counting begins on the next working day.
How do I include holidays?
The calculator skips only weekly days off. For holidays or leave, add the hours you would have worked on those days to the remaining work, which pushes the date back by the right number of working days.