Days between dates are a crucial tool for planning and decision-making in a variety of contexts and personal endeavors. While calculating days helps a financial planner plan payment dates, manage budgets, and prevent late penalties, it can also help a project manager keep an eye on project timeframes and guarantee that deadlines are met on time. Individual milestones are calculated and tracked using Excel's "count days between dates" feature.

Businesses need to calculate dates accurately because doing otherwise might lead to a lot of issues.

• Inventory Management Challenges (Overstocking or Stockouts)

• Payment Penalties

• Delay in Project / Product Delivery

• Payroll errors

• Customer Service Challenges
  
  
  

To mitigate such problems, it is necessary to invest in reliable date calculation tools. Excel is excellent for basic date calculations and provides a convenient and efficient solution.

Date Calculations in Excel 

Excel is one of the most popular choices for date-related calculations in most of the business. It has a straightforward, user-friendly interface, collaborative and built-in functions. It also has conditional formatting options that highlight the required date ranges in different color codes. For instance, the color code for upcoming deadlines can be unique, whereas overdue tasks can have different color codes.

Using Built-in Date Functions in Excel

Excel has multiple built-in date functions. Let us understand the three vital functions used across business. These three functions let you do date-based calculations without programming and complicated formulas.

• DAYS

• DATEDIF

• NETWORKDAYS

Date Format

Before understanding each function, it is vital to understand the date formats. Date formats refer to how the date will be visible in each Cell of your spreadsheet. Usually, the date will be visible in either of these formats. MM/DD/YYYY or DD/MM/YYYY. In some cases, custom format dates will also be visible. It is vital to have a uniform format before using the date parameters in the below functions.

To have the date format according to your region, you need to adjust the locale setting in the spreadsheet.

• Open your spreadsheet in Excel.

• Right click and go to format cells.

• Under the format cells option, find the Locale setting

• Select your region from the drop-down list.

DAYS: For calculating the Date Range

The DAYS function in the spreadsheet is a simple function used to obtain the total number of days between the two given dates.

Syntax

Sample

Calculate the date difference between 7/16/1969 and 7/24/1969

Result = 8 days.

DATEDIF: For Precise Time Frame

This function is an advanced version of the DAYS function. This function can find the difference between two days and two months of given dates and the number of years between two given dates.

Syntax:

Sample

Calculate the number of months between 12/30/2020 and 11/30/2023

Result = 35 months.

NETWORKDAYS: For Accurate Working Days

It is a salient function to fetch the net working days between two provided dates and account for Holidays.

Syntax:

Sample

Calculate the number of working days between the dates 01/01/2020 and 12/31/2020. Consider the below dates as holidays “01/01/2020, 01/02/2020, 01/03/2020, 01/06/2020, 01/07/2020, 01/08/2020”. This holiday information is present in the range E6 to E11.

Result without holidays = 262 days (Working days excluding Weekends)

Conclusion

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In the evolving industry, it is paramount to stay relevant and competitive. With Superjoin, you can add one additional day to your week. Try Superjoin for free and stay ahead.