In this tutorial, you will learn how to get project end date when we have start day and project duration in workdays. This is possible by using Excel WORKDAY function. This function returns a date in a specific range (before or after selected date). In our case, it will return an end date based on start date and project duration in days.

Get project end date

Formula

=WORKDAY(start_date, duration_days, public_holidays)

Explanation

The WORKDAY function returns a date in a specific range, before or after a selected date. The function can take in count specified holidays, but it is not mandatory.
The parameters of the function are: start_date – a starting date of a project for which we want to get a midpoint; duration_days – a duration of a project for which we want to get a midpoint; holidays is a non-obligatory parameter which enables the function to take in counts holiday dates and skip them. To enable this, we need to create a table with all holiday’s dates. Also, we need to define a name for range containing holidays’ dates.

Example 1

In the following example, we will see how to get project end date, if we have starting date and duration of a project in workdays. We will also take in count holidays while calculating the start date. Let’s see how the formula looks like:

=WORKDAY(C3, D3, public_holidays)

Figure 1. Get project end date

As you can see in the picture, in column B (“Project”), we have project names. In column C (“Start date”), we have start dates of projects, while in column D (“Workdays”) we have a length of every project in working days. In the column E (“End date”) we want to get an end date of every project.
First of all, we created a new table which has the list of holidays and their dates and named the range G3:G6 “public_holidays”.

In the example, we want to get the project end date based on cells C3 and D3 and put it in the cell E3. Therefore, our start date will be 25-Jan-18 and project duration 30 working days. As 15-Feb-18 is the Holiday, the formula will skip this date and weekends and return 9-Mar-18 in the cell E3 as the end date of the Project 1.