What 5 to 7 business days actually means

Business days are weekdays: Monday through Friday. Saturdays, Sundays and holidays the seller observes do not count. Most sellers also do not count the day you ordered, so counting usually starts the next weekday.

With no holiday in the way, that puts a 5 to 7 business day promise somewhere between 5 and 11 calendar days from the day you clicked buy. Where it lands in that range depends on the day of the week you ordered. Order on a Monday and 5 business days lands on the following Monday, 7 calendar days later. Order on a Friday and 7 business days lands on the Tuesday of the week after next, 11 calendar days later. Order on a Sunday and 5 business days lands on Friday, only 5 calendar days later, because the weekend is already behind you before counting starts.

How to count it, step by step

1. Start with the first business day after the day you ordered. If you ordered Friday, Saturday or Sunday, that is Monday.
2. Count that day as day 1.
3. Keep counting weekdays. Skip every Saturday, every Sunday, and any holiday the seller or carrier is closed for.
4. The day you land on is the estimate.

Worked example, no holidays. You order on Friday the 4th. Counting starts Monday the 7th, which is business day 1. Business day 5 is Friday the 11th. Business day 7 is Tuesday the 15th. So "5 to 7 business days" means Friday the 11th through Tuesday the 15th, which is 7 to 11 calendar days after you ordered.

Worked example with a holiday. You order the Friday before Thanksgiving. Counting starts Monday: Monday is 1, Tuesday is 2, Wednesday is 3, Thursday is Thanksgiving and does not count, Friday is 4, and the following Monday is 5. A holiday inside the window pushes the estimate back by one business day. Mid-week that costs you one calendar day. When the pushed day lands on the far side of a weekend, as business day 5 does here, moving from Friday to the following Monday, it costs three. Separately, some warehouses also close the Friday after a Thursday holiday. If yours does, that Friday drops out of the count too and everything after it shifts by one more business day, so check the seller's published holiday schedule if there is one.

If you would rather not count on your fingers, the Benchvale date calculator will add business days to a date for you, and days between two dates will count the business days between two dates. Neither tool knows holidays on its own, so paste in any you want skipped.

Does the day I order count?

Usually not, and that is a common reason a package feels late when it is actually on time.

Two things have to happen before a business day can be spent on your order: the order has to be captured, and someone has to work on it. An order placed at 9pm on a Tuesday is not going to be picked, packed or manifested on Tuesday. Sellers generally handle this by treating the next weekday as day 1. Some state it plainly in their shipping policy, and some do not, which is why this trips people up.

There is a real edge here worth knowing: a cutoff time. Many sellers will count the same day if you order before a stated cutoff. Cutoffs vary from seller to seller, and they are usually stated at checkout or in the shipping policy rather than left to guesswork. If your seller publishes a cutoff, use it. If they do not, assume the next weekday.

Processing time and transit time are two different clocks

This is the second reason estimates get missed. "Ships in 1 to 2 business days" and "arrives in 5 to 7 business days" are not the same promise, and when a site shows both, you add them.

• Processing time is how long the seller takes to pick, pack and hand the parcel to a carrier. It is counted in the seller's business days.
• Transit time is how long the carrier takes once it has the parcel. It is counted in the carrier's business days.

A listing that says "processing 2 business days, delivery 5 to 7 business days" is really a 7 to 9 business day promise, which with no holidays works out to somewhere in the range of 9 to 13 calendar days from the order, again depending on which day of the week you ordered. If the page only gives you one number, check whether the words are "ships within" or "arrives within." Those two phrases differ by the whole transit window.

Which holidays actually get skipped?

No federal law makes a private company close on a holiday. A few state laws do. Massachusetts and Rhode Island close most retail stores on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Maine closes stores over 5,000 square feet on those days and on Easter. Otherwise it is mostly the seller's choice. Private carriers set their own schedules. Many sellers, and the Postal Service, follow the federal holiday calendar, which has 11 days on it:

• New Year's Day, January 1
• Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., the third Monday in January
• Washington's Birthday, the third Monday in February
• Memorial Day, the last Monday in May
• Juneteenth National Independence Day, June 19
• Independence Day, July 4
• Labor Day, the first Monday in September
• Columbus Day, the second Monday in October
• Veterans Day, November 11
• Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November
• Christmas Day, December 25

When one of the fixed date holidays falls on a Saturday, the federal observance moves to the Friday before; when it falls on a Sunday, it moves to the Monday after. These shift rules govern federal employees; private sellers and carriers set their own schedules. For a seller that follows the federal calendar, that shifted day is the one that gets skipped, so a Christmas on a Sunday costs you Monday the 26th rather than Sunday the 25th.

Two practical caveats. First, carriers and sellers do not all observe the same subset: a warehouse may work Columbus Day while the delivery network runs a reduced schedule, or the reverse. Second, if you are shipping across a border, the holidays that matter are the ones in the destination country, not yours. This is also why two date tools can hand you two different answers for the same order: one may skip the 11 federal holidays while the other skips none, or skips a state or banking calendar instead. That is a difference in the question being asked, not a bug in either tool.

What to do when it is past the estimate

An estimate in business days is a plan, not a guarantee, and it breaks in ordinary ways: an item goes out of stock after the order is captured, a payment is held for review, or weather takes a sorting facility offline. Before you contact anyone, recount using the rules above. Start from the first weekday after the order, skip weekends, skip any holiday in the window, and add the processing window if the listing gave you one separately. It is easy to send a "where is my order" message a day or two before the estimate has actually run out.

If you have recounted and the date really has passed, the useful thing to have ready is the order date, the tracking number, and the exact wording of the promise from the listing or confirmation email. "Your site said 5 to 7 business days, I ordered on the 4th, business day 7 was the 15th, and it is now the 17th" is a message that gets resolved. "It's late" is not.

Related

The days between dates tool counts business days and lets you enter the holidays that apply to your case. The date calculator adds or subtracts a business-day amount from one start date. Does the end date count covers whether the first and last days are included at all, and the date and time tools hub has the rest.