Need help subtracting workdays from a date

[jared.smith]

Hey all,

I’m trying to set up internal milestones based on a project’s due date. I’m trying to set them up by planning backwards, subtracting workdays for each milestone.

In this case, the due date for milestone 1 should be 5 workdays before the start date for milestone 2.

Here’s what I have currently:

SUBTRACT_DAYS({Milestone2#Start}, 5)

However, this is subtracting total days, not workdays.

I’ve tried to reverse engineer this but I’ve always been bad with formulas and I have zero idea what I’m doing here. The end result in my head is something like:

SUBTRACT_DAYS({Milestone2#Start}, (formula for 5 workdays))

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to accomplish this? Searches of Google + the forums don’t point me to any formulas for manually calculating the number of workdays.

[lavanyasreepada]

Hi,

Try this page, Date Arithmetic–specifically the section Subtracting Dates. Note the WORKDAY (Workday Online Training )function in the last paragraph.

For example, if the source date is in A2 and the days prior (as a nonnegative value) is in B2:

=TEXT(WORKDAY(A2, B2 * -1), “m/d/yyyy”)

Thanks and Regards,
Lavanya Sreepada.

[Luiza]

Hi there! Did anyone find answer for this? I need to substract some working days from a date, trying to go backwards with a workflow process, starting from the deadline and returning the start date of the project, but I did not find any formula to accomplish this.

[Dani (Dani Lester)]

Hi @Luiza

Welcome to the Community!

You might like to use an automation to achieve this instead!
Using the custom automation feature, you can set up an automation that will push another date forwards / backwards by a specific number of days.
In this automation, you can configure whether this should be calendar days or business days.

You can read more on the custom automations feature here: Build your own custom automation

Here is an example of the kind of automation you like to create:

Could this be an option for you?

Best,

Dani

[Luiza]

Thanks Dani, this is helpful, but the issue that I am facing is that I don’t have a static number of days to remove from the deadline.

I would need an automation like this:

When Deadline Date Changes,

Then push Start Date by “Working Days TAT” business days – where working days TAT is a column in my board, because each line item should have a different Start and Deadline date.

[CharlotteK (Charlotte Kirkham)]

Hi Luiza! Sorry for the late response here - are you still running into this formula issue? If so, shoot us an email at support@monday.com and we’d be happy to workshop this together!