Deadlines and working days
How the clock is counted, where holidays come from, and what happens when a deadline passes.
On this page
Most deadline disputes are arithmetic, not judgement. This is the arithmetic.
Working days versus calendar days
Set per stage on the case type.
Working days exclude weekends and the holidays in your workspace calendar. A ten-working-day deadline entered on a Friday is due a fortnight on Monday.
Calendar days count everything. A ten-calendar-day deadline entered on a Friday is due the Monday after next.
If your regulator says "ten working days", use working days. Approximating with fourteen calendar days is right most weeks and wrong around every bank holiday.
When the clock starts
On entry to the stage, not on case creation. A case that spends three days in triage before reaching stage one has a stage-one deadline counted from day three.
This matters when a rule counts from receipt rather than from allocation. In that case the deadline belongs on the first stage, not the stage where the work happens.
The holiday calendar
Settings → Calendar. England and Wales is the default. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland are available, and dates can be added by hand for organisation closures.
When a deadline passes
The case is flagged Overdue and appears in the deadline filters. Nothing is closed, refused or escalated automatically unless a workflow step says so — a missed deadline is a fact to be surfaced, not a decision to be taken.
If you want automatic escalation, add a step triggered on Deadline passed. Most teams instead add one triggered two days before, which is more useful.