Business Hour settings | Online Help | Zoho Projects

Business Hour Settings

In any project, a task's Start Date, End Date, Start time, End Time and Duration are calculated based on project's Business Hour configuration.

Notes
Feature Availability: Premium and Enterprise plans

Set Business Hours

  1. Click   in the upper-right corner of the top navigation band.
  2. Navigate to Portal Configuration and click Business Calendar.
  3. Click the Business Hours tab, then click New Business Hours.
  4. Enter the name of the Business Hours.
  5. Choose the Working Hours and set the Start Time and End Time for each day by dragging the ends on the timeline.
  6. Hover over the work hours to edit or delete them.
  7. Set breaks by clicking on the time set for each day. Click on it to edit or delete the break time.
  8. Select a Holiday List or click Add Holiday List to create a new one.
  9. Click Add.

Calculation of Task Duration Based on Working Days

Calculation of Task Duration based on Start Date and Due Date

The task Duration is calculated depending on its Start Date and Due Date. A task's Start Date and Due Date will always be considered as a working day, when manually selected, even if it falls on a weekend or a holiday.

Example: Task Supply Machinary starts on August 8th, 2025 (Friday) and ends on August 09th, 2025 (Saturday), hence it's task Duration will be 2 days even though the Saturday and Sunday are marked as weekends.

Calculation of End Date based on Start Date and Duration

The Due Date of a task is calculated depending on it's Start Date and Duration. A task's Start Date will always be considered as a working day, when manually selected, even if it falls on a weekend or a holiday. However, it's Due Date is automatically calculated skipping the weekend and holidays based on the Business Hour settings.

Example: Task Supply starts on August 08th, 2025 (Friday) with a Duration of 2 days, it's Due Date will fall on August 11th, 2025 PM (Monday). Since the weekends are excluded in the Business Hour settings they will not be considered when calculating the end date.

Calculation of Task Duration Based on Working Hours

Task duration can be calculated for any combination of working hours assigned to a task. Listed below are some real time task calculations in project management based on different combination of working hours assigned to tasks.

Presume the Business Hours setting is configured between 10 am to 6 pm for tasks in an organization.

Task Start Time is before Business Start Time

If you set the start time of a task before the scheduled business start time, the task duration is calculated from the start time of the task till the task end time.

Example:
If Task A starts at 8 am, the working hours of the task will be 5 hours. This is calculated from the start time of the task which falls at 8 am till the end time of the task 1 pm, which adds up to 5 hours.

Task Start time is after Business End Time

If you set the start time of a task after the scheduled business end time, the task duration is calculated from the start time of the task till end of the day, i.e 12 am.

Example:
If Task A starts at 8 PM on 9th of July, 2025 and ends at 3:00 PM on 10th of July, the duration is calculated as start time of task to end of day (08:00 PM to 12:00 AM, 4 hours) plus start time of next business day till end time of task (9:00 AM to 03:00 PM, 6 hours) which totals 10 hours.

Task End Time is Before Business Start Time

If you set the end time of a task before the scheduled business start time, the task duration is calculated from the day's start time i.e 12 AM till the task's end time.

Example:
If the end time of Task A is 6 am, the working hours of the task will be 8 hours. This is calculated from the start time of task till end of business day (4:00 PM to 5:00 PM, 1 hour) plus end of day till the task end time (12:00 am to 6:00 am, 6 hours), which adds up to 7 hours.

Task End Time is After Business Start Time

If you set the end time of a task before the scheduled business end time, the task duration is calculated from the scheduled start time till the end time of the task.

Example:
If the end time of Task A is 3 pm, the working hours of the task will be 6 hours. This is calculated from the scheduled business start time of the task (9 am), till the task end time (3 pm), which adds up to 6 hours.
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