Working days are one of those “boring” details that end up driving real outcomes:
- your delivery plan (“we can ship in 10 working days”)
- your timesheet and billed hours
- your payroll math (partial months, pro-rating, unpaid days, etc.)
- your notice periods and date-based clauses in contracts
This guide explains how to think about working days in Romania, how to avoid the most common counting mistakes, and how to use our calculators to get consistent results.
TL;DR
- Decide what you mean by “working days”: Mon–Fri only, or Mon–Fri minus public holidays as well.
- Always state whether your date range is inclusive (“from 1 to 31”) or exclusive (“from 1st, up to but not including 31st”).
- For planning, use working days; for long ranges, sanity-check against calendar days.
- the Workday calendar and the days between dates calculator.
Who this is for
- IT employees trying to understand “how many working days are in a month”.
- Contractors estimating delivery timelines, sprints, and billing periods.
- PMs and team leads who need consistent working-day calculations in project plans.
Definitions you should align on (before you calculate)
Calendar days
All days in the range (including weekends and holidays). Useful for real-world duration: “this takes 3 weeks”.
Working days (basic)
Usually Monday to Friday, excluding weekends. This is a common baseline for project estimation.
Working days (Romania + public holidays)
Monday to Friday minus Romanian public holidays that fall on weekdays.
Different companies and contracts treat public holidays differently depending on context. For payroll, public holidays are typically non-working days. For delivery estimates, what matters is your team’s actual availability.
The two calculations most people confuse
1) “How many working days are in a month?”
This is the capacity question: “How many productive weekdays do we have in this month?”
Typical workflow:
- Start from the month’s calendar.
- Remove weekends.
- Remove public holidays (if your organization treats them as non-working days).
- Adjust for personal days: vacation, sick leave, training, travel.
Use the working days calculator.
2) “How many days are between two dates?”
This is a timeline question: “If I start on date X and finish on date Y, how many days is that?”
Use the days between dates calculator to get a consistent baseline and then translate into working days when needed.
Inclusive vs exclusive ranges (the silent source of arguments)
When someone says “from January 10 to January 20”, people might mean:
- Inclusive: count both start and end dates.
- Exclusive end: count start date but not the end date.
Practical rule:
- For work periods (“I’ll work from Monday to Friday”), teams often count inclusively.
- For deadlines (“deliver by Friday”), be explicit about whether Friday is included as a working day.
If you share estimates externally (clients, stakeholders), add a one-liner: “Range is inclusive of both start and end dates, excluding weekends and public holidays.”
Worked examples (how to avoid bad assumptions)
Example 1: A project estimate that sounds right but fails
You estimate: “This will take 10 working days.”
Common failure mode:
- You mentally translate 10 working days to “2 calendar weeks”.
- But your period includes a public holiday and unavoidable meetings/reviews.
Fix:
- Use working days as the baseline.
- Then add a buffer for real life:
- reviews/QA
- meetings and context switching
- waiting time (approvals, dependencies)
Example 2: Billing period for a contractor
If you invoice “per day” and your contract says “daily rate”, define what a “day” means:
- Is a working day Mon–Fri only?
- Are public holidays excluded?
- Do half-days exist (or is every day treated as a full day)?
A simple timesheet makes this defensible:
- the timesheet
Example 3: Comparing two offers with different start dates
Offer A: start “in two weeks”. Offer B: start “on the 1st of next month”.
Calendar distance can be misleading. Compare the number of working days until start, not just “two weeks”.
Romania-specific notes (public holidays)
Romanian public holidays can change, and some holidays depend on the year.
What to do:
- For official planning, cross-check against your company’s holiday calendar or an official source.
- For rough estimates, start with Mon–Fri and validate the exact dates once your plan becomes real.
A practical checklist for “working day” communication
Before you send an estimate or include dates in a contract, ensure you can answer:
- Does “working days” exclude weekends only, or also public holidays?
- Which timezone matters for boundaries (especially for distributed teams)?
- Is the range inclusive?
- What happens if a deadline lands on a non-working day?
FAQ
Do I need to exclude public holidays every time?
Not always. For capacity planning and payroll-like calculations, excluding them often makes sense. For early delivery estimates, you can start with Mon–Fri and then validate against the calendar once dates are confirmed.
Why do my working-day results differ from someone else’s spreadsheet?
Typically due to one of:
- inclusive vs exclusive end date
- public holidays included/excluded
- different weekend rules (some industries have Saturday work)
What should I read next?
For continuity, see timesheet best practices, vacation pay/time off, and the time calculator.
