How to count business days between two dates in Jira

Q: Does Jira have a business days function?

Only inside Automation: the businessDays unit of the diff and plus smart values. JQL has none, and the Automation value ignores public holidays.

Q: What counts as a business day in Jira Automation?

Atlassian describes it as Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm. There is no per-team work week and no holiday calendar.

Q: How do I count business days between two dates in Jira, excluding holidays?

Not natively. You can use a spreadsheet with a list of holidays, or an app that keeps calendars, such as Daywise.

Q: Can I find work due in the next five business days with JQL?

Not natively. With Daywise, duedate <= businessDaysFromNow(5) does it.

Q: Does the count include the start day?

It depends on the tool. Daywise counts the days after the start up to and including the end; the spreadsheet function NETWORKDAYS counts both ends. Atlassian’s page doesn’t say how its smart value counts, so test it with date-only values (a time of day can change the result).

By Kayabyte · Updated 1 November 2026

Short answer: Jira Automation can count business days between two dates with the smart value {{date1.diff(date2).businessDays}} and add them with plusBusinessDays, but it treats business days as Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm, with no public holidays and no per-team work week. JQL has no business-day function at all. Daywise: Business Days & Holiday Calendars for Jira, in Atlassian Marketplace review and not yet available, counts with a calendar per team (work week, hours, time zone, holidays, closures) in JQL, fields and Automation.

“How many working days did this take?” and “is this due within five business days?” are simple questions that Jira has no built-in answer for outside Automation. This guide shows what you can do with Jira alone, and where it gets the answer wrong.

Option 1: the Automation smart value

In a Jira Automation rule you can use the diff smart value with the unit businessDays (Atlassian: date and time smart values):

{{issue.created.diff(issue.resolutiondate).businessDays}}

Create a rule (for example, when a work item is resolved).
Add an action that uses the value, such as Edit work item fields into a number field, or a comment.
For a date, use {{now.plusBusinessDays(3)}}: BusinessDays is a listed unit of the plus function, in the same way as days or weeks.

Details from Atlassian’s page: the result is negative if the second date is earlier than the first, and the abs modifier gives a positive number. Atlassian describes business days as Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm.

Where it stops:

No holidays. Atlassian’s own scheduling article says rules using business days will not consider non-working holidays: a task due on the second business day of the month is still created if that day is a public holiday (Atlassian KB). The request to define non-working days is AUTO-971.
One work week for everybody. Teams that work Sunday to Thursday, or have a different time zone, get the Monday to Friday answer.
Only inside a rule. The value exists while the rule runs. To search or sort by it you have to store it in a field, and keep it up to date.
Check the edges. Atlassian’s page doesn’t say whether the first or the last day counts, so test with two dates you can count by hand before you rely on it.

Option 2: JQL

JQL has date functions such as startOfWeek() and endOfDay(), but none that count business days, so due within 5 business days can’t be written natively. The usual workaround is to calculate a date in Automation and write it into a date field, then search on that field.

Option 3: a spreadsheet

Export the work items with their created, resolved and due dates and use a spreadsheet function such as NETWORKDAYS(start, end, holidays), with a range of holiday dates. This handles holidays, but:

It counts both the start and the end day, so Monday to Wednesday is 3, not 2. Pick one convention and say which.
Every team needs its own holiday list and (for a non-standard week) NETWORKDAYS.INTL.
The export is a snapshot; it doesn’t update, can’t be used in a filter, and can’t drive an Automation rule.

What a business-day calculation needs

Before you choose a tool, write down:

The work week of each team, including Sunday to Thursday weeks.
The holidays that apply, by country and region, and which of them your team really takes off.
Company closures and short days.
The convention for counting: days after the start up to and including the end, or both ends.
The time zone the dates are read in.

Daywise: Business Days & Holiday Calendars for Jira

Daywise is the app I make for this. Each calendar has a work week, working hours, a time zone, public holidays for a country and region (for about 200 countries), company closures, short days and extra working days. Projects use their own calendar or the default one.

Counting convention: business days after the start date, up to and including the end date. Monday to Wednesday is 2, the same day is 0, and an end date before the start gives a negative number. Adding business days works like WORKDAY in spreadsheets.
JQL: duedate <= businessDaysFromNow(5), created <= businessDaysAgo(10), with an optional calendar name such as businessDaysFromNow(5, "Oslo office").
Fields: Business days open and Business days to due date, searchable and usable on screens, boards and list views. For example "Business days to due date" < 0 finds overdue work.
Automation steps: Daywise: count business days or hours counts business time between two dates and returns {{fetchedDaywiseCount.value}}; Daywise: add business days or hours and Daywise: check a business day return smart values for the next steps of the rule.
Dates are counted in the calendar’s time zone. Holiday data comes from the open-source date-holidays project; check the preview of days off each year and add closures where your team differs.

Daywise doesn’t change Jira Service Management SLA calendars, boards or timelines. It is in Atlassian Marketplace review and not yet available to install.

FAQ

Does Jira have a business days function? Only inside Automation: the businessDays unit of the diff and plus smart values. JQL has none, and the Automation value ignores public holidays.

What counts as a business day in Jira Automation? Atlassian describes it as Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm. There is no per-team work week and no holiday calendar.

How do I count business days between two dates in Jira, excluding holidays? Not natively. You can use a spreadsheet with a list of holidays, or an app that keeps calendars, such as Daywise.

Can I find work due in the next five business days with JQL? Not natively. With Daywise, duedate <= businessDaysFromNow(5) does it.

Does the count include the start day? It depends on the tool. Daywise counts the days after the start up to and including the end; the spreadsheet function NETWORKDAYS counts both ends. Atlassian’s page doesn’t say how its smart value counts, so test it with date-only values (a time of day can change the result).

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