How Paydays Until works

What the tool calculates

You give Paydays Until three things: your next payday, how often you're paid, and a target date. From those it builds a list of every payday between now and your target date, then counts them. If you also enter a savings target, it works out how much to put aside at each of those paydays to reach it.

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How payday dates are generated

The method depends on how often you're paid.

Weekly pay

Starting from your next payday, Paydays Until adds 7 days repeatedly until it passes your target date. Each date is a fixed 7 days after the last.

Fortnightly pay

The same idea, but adding 14 days each time. Fortnightly pay is not tied to calendar months — it's a strict 14-day cycle, so the date drifts slowly through the month over the course of a year.

Four-weekly pay

Adding 28 days each time. Because 28 days doesn't divide evenly into a year, four-weekly pay produces 13 paydays across a full year rather than 12.

Monthly pay

Monthly pay is calculated once per calendar month, using whichever rule you choose:

• Same date each month — the same day number as your next payday. If that day doesn't exist in a given month (for example the 31st in April), the final day of that month is used instead. This correctly accounts for leap years in February.
• Last day of the month — the calendar's final date of each month, whatever day of the week it falls on.
• Last working day of the month — the final date of the month, moved back to the preceding Friday if it falls on a Saturday or Sunday.
• Last Friday of the month — the last Friday that occurs within each calendar month.

Weekend adjustments

By default, Paydays Until keeps whatever date your pay cycle produces, even if it lands on a Saturday or Sunday. Under More options you can instead choose to move a weekend payday to the previous Friday, or to the next Monday. This adjustment is applied consistently to every payday in the list, not just the first one.

Savings calculations

If you enter a savings target, Paydays Until subtracts anything you've already saved, then divides what's left by the number of paydays before your target date. That gives the amount to save at each payday. You can round this up to the nearest £1, £5 or £10 under More options — rounding always goes up, so you reach your target on time.

If you instead tell it how much you can realistically save each payday, it works out your likely total by the target date, whether that reaches your goal, and — if it does — which payday you'll hit it on. If it falls short, it tells you the shortfall and the amount you'd actually need to save each payday to close the gap.

Target-date handling

If a payday happens to fall exactly on your target date, you can choose whether it counts towards the total. By default it does. This only affects paydays that land precisely on the target date — every payday before it is always counted.

Limitations

Paydays Until works from the dates and frequency you enter — it doesn't know your actual employment contract or payroll calendar. Bank holidays, payroll processing changes, and one-off adjustments by an employer aren't accounted for. If you're not sure exactly when or how often you're paid, check with your employer or payslip before relying on the result for anything important.

The savings figures are simple arithmetic, not financial advice. See the Terms page for more on how the results should be used.

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