Entrepreneurs looking to participate in the business world need a good understanding of how that world works. Part of that understands how the business world keeps time.
Business days are the way the working world tracks delivery dates, contract times, deal closes, and the like. For any business situation where a time must be agreed upon, it is important to understand business days.
In this article, we'll give you a guide to business days, their history, and how they're used. We'll also look at business days in other parts of the world and highlight some recent experiments in changing the number of business days in a given business week. Finally, we'll get to some frequently asked questions.
What are Business Days?
A business day is classified as an official business day during the week. It can also be called a work day, and many people simply know it as a "day of the week." Official business days are typically Monday through Friday in the United States and in most of the Western Hemisphere, such as the European Union. The exception is holidays.
But different parts of the world have different customs. Some cultures observe a Friday and Saturday weekend, while others only have one day a week that is considered a non-business day. (We'll get to them in the next section.)
Business days are useful to know for several reasons. In financial markets, business days are often the way contract times are set. Same thing in the world of real estate: contracts are often set to have a certain window of business days to close a sale, do inspections, etc.
If you have ever ordered a package, you may also be aware that business days are used to denote shipping time. If a package is promised in three business days and you order it on Friday, it will not arrive on Monday, but will arrive on the following Wednesday, since a weekend day does not count as a business day. That's why it's also helpful to understand these days if you work as a delivery driver.
How many business days are in a year?
While there are 365 calendar days in a year (with the exception of leap years), there are generally around 260 business days in any given year. In 2019, for example, there will be 261 business days. This takes into account both weekends and holidays.
The number of business days varies annually and depends on whether or not the start or end date of the year falls on a weekend. There is also an exception for the leap year, which removes one day of the year every four years, via the current configuration of the Gregorian calendar.
The calendar year we are discussing here is based on the Gregorian calendar, the standard calendar used by most of the world's cultures. There are still cultures that follow their own calendar, but most workers will break out of the 365-day annual calendar.
Some companies build their calendar around the fiscal year, which is an accounting designation meant to find out how a company performed in the previous year. Fiscal years can run on the standard calendar year, January through December, or whatever a company or industry decides.
How long are the working days?
Business hours vary widely by region, industry, company, and more. In the United States and most of the West, the accepted standard for a business day is the eight-hour day. For financial markets and other industries, standard business hours often run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to 5 p.m., as part of the 24-hour day defined by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
That said, some companies have a 10-hour workday, and many people work alternate hours like night shifts. There is no actual standard business day. However, for scheduling purposes, many industries use "business day" as shorthand for a standard day, 9-5 days, with 5 p.m. which acts as the cut-off time for the end of a business day.
In the financial sector in the United States, a business day tends to refer to when the New York Stock Exchange is open, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time. For people on Central Time, Atlantic Time, Mountain Time, or Pacific Time, it depends on the industry. Many companies will maintain standard 9-5 hours no matter where they are, but for people in the financial markets, they can simply stick to 9-5 Eastern hours to work when the stock market is open.
For financial workers who trade foreign exchange markets, their business day can often correspond to wherever they are trading: as long as the market is open. in Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, New Delhi, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur or St. Petersburg, these workers will be online.
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