Type 5 days and you get five days of work. From a Monday that is five calendar days; from a Thursday it is seven. Days nobody works are shaded on the chart, so a bar sitting on a shaded band is visibly wrong. Set the working week for the company, then override it for the crew that works Saturdays or for one rush job. Built only for post-frame and barndominium builders, where the concrete crew pours on a Saturday and the framers never do.
Also called: weekends · working week · M-F · does the schedule count Saturdays · calendar days vs work days
Type five days and you get five days of work, not five days on a calendar
A five-day stage starting Thursday finishes the following Wednesday, because nobody is on site Saturday or Sunday. The schedule counts in the days your crew actually works and puts the bar where it belongs. Enter it as calendar days — which is what a spreadsheet does — and the finish date is wrong before the job has begun.
A five-day stage typed on a Thursday "finishes" on Monday, the customer is told Monday, and nobody on that crew works weekends.
A crew boss believes a finish date only when it lands on a day his men are actually on site. Counting in working days puts the bar where the work really happens, so the date the customer hears is one the crew can hit — and you stop apologising for Saturdays that were never real.
Days nobody works are shaded, so an impossible date looks impossible
Non-working days draw as bands behind the bars at day and week zoom, with Saturday and Sunday merged into one. A stage sitting on a shaded band is visibly wrong, which is what makes the schedule readable at a glance rather than something you audit stage by stage. At quarter and year zoom the shading drops away, where a weekend would be a sliver.
Nobody spots the stage booked across a holiday weekend until the crew asks why they're on the calendar for Sunday.
The office reads the board from across the room, and a bar crossing a grey band is a problem anyone can point at. That is what lets people trust the dates instead of auditing them stage by stage. At quarter and year zoom the bands drop away, because seven slivers to an inch is noise.
One weekend counted wrong does not drift the whole build
Stages chain, so a weekend counted as work near the start pushes everything after it. Six stages in, a build could drift by more than a week before anyone lifted a hammer — and the customer has already been given a completion date that was never possible. Counting in working days stops the drift at the source.
One weekend counted as work in Permitting pushes every later stage, and the build is a week late on paper before anyone lifts a hammer.
The customer remembers the first finish date you gave, so it has to be right the first time. Counting in working days fixes the error where it starts, before it rides down six chained stages and turns into a week of slip you have to explain.
Your concrete sub works Saturdays; your framing crew doesn't
Set the working week once for the company, override it on the crew that works Saturdays, and override it again on the one rush job that has to run through a weekend. Each level shows the week it inherits, so "same as the company" has a visible consequence instead of something you go and look up. The last remaining day cannot be switched off — a crew that works no days cannot be scheduled at all.
One company calendar says nobody works Saturday, so the concrete crew's Saturday pours live on a separate whiteboard the schedule never sees.
Crews don't all keep the same week — the concrete crew pours Saturday mornings, the framers never do — and each crew boss wants a schedule that knows it. Company, then crew, then job, first one set wins, so a rush job can run through a weekend without moving anyone else's dates. Each level shows what it inherits, so "same as the company" is visible instead of assumed.
A start date picked on a Saturday rolls to Monday, and says so
Picking a Saturday used to schedule a crew onto a Saturday. Now the date rolls forward to the next working day and the field tells you that it did. Chaining one stage onto the end of the one before it does the same.
Picking the 12th off the calendar books the framers on a Saturday, and they find out on Friday afternoon.
A man told to show up on a day he doesn't work stops trusting the schedule. Rolling a Saturday pick forward to the next working day — and saying so on the field — means the office never books a crew onto a day off by accident, and chained stages land the same way.
- 1Set the working week for the company once.
- 2Override it on a crew that works Saturdays, or on one rush job.
- 3Type a stage's length in working days.
- 4A start picked on a Saturday rolls to Monday, and the field says so.
- 5Non-working days draw as shaded bands behind the bars.
Stage lengths were counted in calendar days, so a five-day stage starting Thursday was scheduled to finish Monday — straight through a weekend nobody works. Because each stage starts when the last one ends, every later stage inherited the error, and a six-stage build had drifted more than a week before anyone lifted a hammer. Crews were told to show up on Saturdays that were never real, and customers were given completion dates the plan could not hit.
- Stage durations counted in calendar days producing impossible dates
- Chained stages compounding the weekend error across a whole build
- No way to say one crew works Saturdays and another doesn't
Company, crew and job working weeks
Three levels, and the most specific one wins. The company setting is the floor, a crew can override it, and one job can override that. Each picker shows the week it would inherit, so "same as the company" has a visible consequence instead of something you go and look up.
The seven-day week picker
A row of seven day toggles with a plain summary under it — Mon–Fri, Mon, Wed, Fri, Every day. The whole week is visible at once, so a Saturday that is switched on shows without opening anything.
Weekends shaded on the chart
Shaded bands down the board on every non-working day in the company's week. Saturday and Sunday merge into one band so no seam shows. The shading appears at day and week zoom, where a weekend is wide enough to see.
Stage length in working days
The length field says in working days and names the week it is counting on. Type 5 and you get five days of crew on site, not five squares on a calendar. A start dropped on a Saturday rolls forward to the next working day, and the field tells you it did.
