In India salary is usually paid on the last working day of a month – the payday. It is slightly different in countries where payrolls are processed every 2 weeks. For eg. in US most companies pay salary on every 2nd Friday / Thursday.
We can calculate the paydays / payroll periods in excel with simple date formulas:
Calculating last working day of a month – Payday for monthly payroll processing

Put in other words, last working day of a month is nothing but 1 working day before first day of next month. So last working day of Jan 2008 is one working day before first day of Feb 2008; 2/1/2008.
Here is how you can find out payday for all months in a given calendar year :
Assuming months are in column B, from B3 to B14, last working day of first month can be found by WORKDAY() formula: =WORKDAY(B4,-1). WORKDAY() excel formula calculates a future / past date by adding / subtracting any number of working days from it. Ex: =workday(today(),5) will return the date of 5th working day from today.
Calculating Payroll Dates for Biweekly Salaries – Typical US Payroll Calendar Dates
Calculating US Payroll dates is slightly complicated. First we have to find the first Monday of the year. This begins the first pay-period of 26 pay-periods in America. Then, each payday is exactly 12 days after the starting Monday.
Here is how we can find the first Monday of any given year: =if(weekday("1/1/2008")=2,"1/1/2008","1/1/2008"+9-weekday("1/1/2008")), we are using weekday() function to find the day of week on 1/1/2008 and then add required number of days to it to get the First Monday of the year.
Once the first Monday is calculated, then finding the payday dates for each pay period is simple. First payment date is 12 days away from the Monday and subsequent pay dates are 14 days apart.
More on date / time: 10 tips on using, formatting date / time in excel.














23 Responses to “Learn Top 10 Excel Features”
What it looks like if excel without formula?? 🙂
It would be not excel it would just be fancy tables in which you could just use power point. (Chandoo) would Access be an alternative?
Awesome piece of work!!!
Great article.
Chandoo - my biggest interest in the article was the awesome word-graphic at the top - where did you go to get it done into a shape?
@Rich.. thank you. I used http://www.tagxedo.com/ to generate this word cloud. I took all the comments in the original post, pasted them in tagxedo website and set up the shape etc.
Awesome Chandoo.. You need always needs coffee to start up with. BTW , how did u created the Heart Shaped picture filled with High Repetitive text in it .. Please put it on your Next blog ...
Chandoo, good article. I’ve added a link to it from Connexion – our collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web. See http://www.i-nth.com/resources/connexion
Hi,
Just one small question. Where the hell have been I in the past for not discovering this website sooner?
I've lost a job interview recently where even though I had the subject knowledge, I was not upto their mark in Excel.
Thank you for all the free tips, guidance and for creating this forum environment.
[PS: I've just been through the site for the 1st time, and have signed up for the newsletter. You can expect pretty stupid questions from me soon]
Hy Chandoo, you always inspire me with to explore something new in excel. This data structure table is only for excel 2007 or compatible to 2010. I recently installed latest excel version 2013 in my System and experience problems regarding operating according to previous one. I'm waiting your article relates to that excel version.
Thanks
Awesome article Mr. Chandoo and that is a awesome heart shaped pic you created. Great tips as well.
[...] Learn Top 10 Excel Features | Chandoo.org – Learn Microsoft Excel Online. [...]
Chandoo is awesome..
Thanks, i got better, And i always get 90.50 in my grade card but now i get 96.50 i improved because of the tutorials you gave, Thank You Very Much Chandoo Guy.
Hi chandoo, i am intersted in seeing the video or step by step done procedure of analysing the comments and presenting in the data percentage steps. I think this one would be first step in finding out how generally happens data calculation. Thank you.
As well i would like to know how to get that black shape art of your face which i see in chandoo. I am interested in making it for me.
Nice to see the features considered by Excel users to be most useful. It might be a good idea to also analyze StackOverflow Excel questions to see what keywords appear most often.
Here are my top 10 Excel Features (for advanced users):
http://www.analystcave.com/excel-10-top-excel-features/
Thanks a ton for this it totally helped with my homework ????
Very good effort
Thank you for this. Lots of learning in the links you've provided for this septuagenarian.
Pls send me new post
Dude, your humor ? ?
Loved your work.
Hello Sir,
I am Sanjeev Khakre and i from Indore City, India , I am your big follower and i have watch your videos and learnt a lots of excel trick or function and many more . thanks so much for all of your excellent support.
Your excel knowledge is real awesome.
Thanks
Sanjeev
Your work is excellent but pls willing to know more details about the features of microsoft excel
Chandoo Would Access be a better alternative than VB?