Start with a payday confirmed by your employer and the rule used for later payments. The calculator repeats a rule; it does not connect to payroll or know about a one-off early payment. Your employer’s confirmed dates take priority over an estimate here.
Which schedule should I choose?
| Option | How dates are chosen |
|---|---|
| Every week | Your known payday, then every 7 days. |
| Every two weeks | Your known payday, then every 14 days. |
| Every four weeks | Your known payday, then every 28 days. See the four-weekly guide. |
| On a specific day each month | The chosen date, such as the 25th; a missing date becomes the last day of that month. |
| Twice a month | Two selected dates, such as the 15th and 31st. Each is adjusted for shorter months. |
| Last Friday of the month | The final Friday, even if it is a bank holiday. |
| Last working day of the month | The final weekday excluding the supported England and Wales bank holidays. |
For weekly, fortnightly or four-weekly schedules, use a normal payday as your starting point. If you enter a future payday, the app starts there and does not mark earlier dates. To see a whole year of repeating paydays, enter a known payday at or before the beginning of that year.
If the rule is unclear, check your written employment particulars or ask payroll. GOV.UK explains that the principal statement includes how much and how often an employee will be paid. The tool cannot infer a contract’s pay arrangements from a single bank transaction.
Fortnightly is not the same as twice monthly
A fortnight is always fourteen days. With Friday 2 October 2026 as the anchor, the next dates are 16 October, 30 October and 13 November. This pattern crosses month boundaries and can give you three paydays in one month.
By comparison, a twice-monthly rule of the 15th and 31st gives 15 October, 31 October, 15 November and 30 November 2026. The date stays tied to the month, so the gaps vary. Neither option moves a payday away from a weekend or holiday automatically.
A monthly rule of the 31st uses 28 February 2027, 31 March 2027 and 30 April 2027. In a leap year it uses 29 February. If both twice-monthly dates collapse onto the same last day, the calendar displays that date once; it does not represent two separate payments.
What happens at weekends and bank holidays?
Only Last working day applies holiday adjustments. For August 2026, the 31st is the summer bank holiday in England and Wales. The preceding two days are a weekend, so this rule selects Friday 28 August. A specific-day rule set to the 31st still selects Monday 31 August.
The app includes England and Wales bank holidays for 2024–2028. Beyond those years it excludes weekends only. It does not apply Scotland’s or Northern Ireland’s different holiday calendars, local holidays, employer shutdowns or changes announced after the data was added.
Check GOV.UK’s bank holiday calendar for the relevant nation and confirm any early or delayed payment with payroll. A bank holiday is not enough information for the app to decide when your employer will pay.
The countdown ends at the start of the chosen date in your device’s local time. It is not an estimate of a bank’s processing time. The calendar keeps today marked as payday throughout that day.
Printing and exporting a useful copy
- Choose your rule, then inspect the next six dates. Check at least one short month or holiday period before relying on the pattern.
- Use Print schedule to open the full-year view. Select the year, then choose Print / Save PDF. Your browser supplies the printing and PDF options.
- Use Add to calendar for either the next payday in Google Calendar or an .ics download containing the next twelve scheduled dates.
The .ics download contains all-day events, not a live subscription. It carries no ongoing connection to the app, and changes here will not update imported events. If your schedule changes, check and remove or edit obsolete events before importing a new copy. Twelve dates can cover much less than a year for weekly pay.
Shared links carry the selected schedule and relevant dates, so someone else can reproduce the pattern. They do not carry your budget figures. Anyone with the link can read that schedule; see the privacy policy before sharing it.