Delivery date planning calculator
Calculate a delivery date range from your quoted transit days, cut-off and handling time. See each counted day, weekend and holiday in the delivery calendar.
Delivery planning, not tracking or a service commitment. Enter the business-day range quoted for your actual origin, destination and service. The initial 2–5 days and 17:00 cut-off are examples.
Not a guaranteed arrival date.
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Order date2026-09-29 | 2026-09-29 | |
| Handling / pick-and-packParcel is ready for collection on 2026-09-30. | 1 business days | |
| Dispatch date2026-09-30 | 2026-09-30 | |
| Transit — Your entered service windowCounts the operating days selected here, skipping the listed holidays at either end. Actual service calendars can differ. | 2–5 business days | Counts the operating days selected here, skipping the listed holidays at either end. Actual service calendars can differ. |
| Earliest delivery2026-10-02 | 2026-10-02 | |
| Window midpoint (not a forecast)2026-10-06 | 2026-10-06 | |
| Latest delivery2026-10-07 | 2026-10-07 |
Day-by-day delivery calendar
Dispatch is day zero. Your transit range plus customs and buffer allowances totals 2–5 operating days. This explains the calculation; it is not tracking data.
- Wed, 30 Sept 2026Dispatch
Dispatch: transit counting starts on the following day.
- Thu, 1 Oct 2026Day 1
Operating day counted under your selected calendar.
- Fri, 2 Oct 2026Day 2
Operating day counted under your selected calendar.
Earliest planned arrival
- Sat, 3 Oct 2026Skipped
Weekend excluded by your operating-day setting.
- Sun, 4 Oct 2026Skipped
Weekend excluded by your operating-day setting.
- Mon, 5 Oct 2026Day 3
Operating day counted under your selected calendar.
- Tue, 6 Oct 2026Day 4
Operating day counted under your selected calendar.
- Wed, 7 Oct 2026Day 5
Operating day counted under your selected calendar.
Latest planned arrival
National public holidays only, covering 2026-2027. Moon-dependent dates are marked approximate. Regional holidays and carrier-specific shutdowns are not included — confirm with your carrier before promising a date around a holiday. Dispatch uses the origin calendar; this conservative transit model skips listed holidays at both ends. Carrier-specific collection schedules, local holidays, strikes, routing and live disruptions are not modelled.
Step 3 of 3 — I am sending a parcel
What will the carrier bill me, and when does it arrive?
- Step 1Billable weightThe weight you are billed on
- Step 2Shipping costThe total with surcharges
- You are here Delivery date
Start from a lane-specific service quote
A carrier name alone cannot predict arrival. Enter the business-day range and collection cut-off supplied for the actual origin, destination and service. This calculator adds handling, your additional customs allowance and a buffer, then applies the operating-day calendar you selected. It has no tracking-number lookup or live carrier connection.
A worked dispatch example
Assume an order on Monday 21 September 2026 at 14:00, a 17:00 collection cut-off, zero handling days and a two-to-four business-day transit range. With no relevant holidays or other allowances, the window is Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 September. Change the order time to 18:00: dispatch moves to Tuesday and the window becomes Thursday 24 to Monday 28 September, with Saturday and Sunday skipped.
Check why each day counts
The day-by-day calendar starts with dispatch as day zero, then labels counted operating days, excluded weekends and stored holidays. It marks the earliest and latest planned arrivals. Handling is counted on the origin calendar, Monday to Friday, after the order or missed-cut-off day. The Saturday setting applies to collection and transit, not warehouse handling. The transit calendar conservatively skips listed holidays at either end; this is a planning assumption, not evidence that a shipment physically stops moving.
Use a range, then check the commitment
Inputs are whole business days. Add customs days only when clearance is excluded from your quoted window. The same allowance is added to both ends; it does not predict the probability of a delay. The midpoint in the calculation breakdown is arithmetic, not the most likely delivery date. Stored national holidays cover 2026-2027; local holidays, carrier exceptions and later years need a separate check. Times are interpreted in the origin location without timezone conversion, and an order exactly at the entered cut-off is treated as on time.
Planning versus measuring an actual delivery
Use this tool before dispatch. If you already have dispatch and arrival dates, the transit-time calculator measures working days between them. Neither tool establishes compensation eligibility. For a customer promise, check the carrier commitment for the accepted shipment.
Questions people ask about this
Answers written from the published rules, not from other people's summaries of them. Every figure quoted below is listed with its source at the foot of this page.
Every formula on this siteWhere should the transit range come from?
Use a current quote or service commitment for the actual addresses, collection date and service. Replace the initial example range before using the result.
Does the dispatch date count as day one?
No. Dispatch is day zero. The next eligible operating day is day one. The calendar shows exactly which dates counted and which were skipped.
Are Saturday and national holidays included?
Saturday is skipped unless you enable it for collection and transit. Warehouse handling always uses Monday to Friday. Stored origin holidays affect dispatch; stored holidays at either end affect the conservative transit count.
Can this tell me where my parcel is?
No. These dates come from your inputs, not live scans. Use the carrier tracking service for shipment progress, exceptions and updated delivery commitments.
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Where these numbers come from
Rates and rules change, and a calculator running on stale data is worse than no calculator. Every figure below carries the date we last checked it and a confidence level, so you can judge how much weight to put on it.
| Source | Publisher | Effective | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published service transit windows and national holiday calendars Two datasets sit behind the delivery-date and transit-time tools, and neither is entered by the user. The first is each service's published transit window — FedEx Priority Overnight at one day, UPS Ground at one to five, Royal Mail Tracked 48, Worldwide Expedited at two to five plus a customs day, and roughly forty more. The second is 383 dated national public holidays across 18 countries for 2026 and 2027, applied at BOTH ends of the lane, with moon-dependent dates flagged approximate. Compiled rather than cited to a single document because no one document exists: transit windows come from each carrier's own service guide and several of those carriers refuse automated requests, and holidays come from each country's own calendar. Regional holidays and carrier-specific shutdowns are deliberately excluded — confirm with your carrier before promising a date around a holiday. | Carrier service guides and national public-holiday sources (compiled) | Not specifiedChecked 2026-08-25 | Corroborated |
Page updated . Spotted something out of date? Tell us — corrections are published with the date they were made.
More on the working: every formula on this site, the full source register, what the terms mean, and how we decide what to publish. What an estimate here can and cannot support is set out in the accuracy notes.