Payroll Pay Period Generator
Generate pay periods (weekly / biweekly / semi-monthly).
Written and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software · Rules last verified · Sources · Changes & corrections
All 12 dates
- Oct 23, 2026
- Nov 6, 2026
- Nov 20, 2026
- Dec 4, 2026
- Dec 18, 2026
- Dec 31, 2026
- Jan 15, 2027
- Jan 29, 2027
- Feb 12, 2027
- Feb 26, 2027
- Mar 12, 2027
- Mar 26, 2027
These calculators are for informational purposes only and do not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice.
How the Payroll Pay Period Generator works
The Payroll Pay Period Generator takes a starting pay date, a pay cycle, and a number of periods and lays out the full run of pay dates — rolling any payday that lands on a weekend or bank holiday backward to the prior working day. Choose weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, or monthly, set your workweek, and select the country whose banking calendar applies; the tool returns the whole schedule rather than leaving you to count fortnights by hand. For the United States that calendar is the Federal Reserve’s, not the federal holiday list: the Fed stays open on the Friday before a holiday that falls on a Saturday, so a Friday payday such as 3 July 2026 is not moved.
The defining rule is that paydays roll backward, not forward. Wages move through banking systems that only settle on business days, so when a scheduled payday falls on a weekend or holiday the responsible default is to pay on the last working day before it — employees expect pay on or before the due date, never after. This is the opposite of how a deadline tool behaves, and confusing the two directions is the most common error in a hand-built pay calendar.
Generating the whole year also surfaces the quirks of each cycle. A biweekly schedule produces 26 pay dates most years — which means two three-payday months — and roughly every eleventh year a 27th payday appears because fourteen-day cycles do not divide the calendar evenly. Seeing every date in advance is what keeps those from becoming a cash-flow surprise.
Worked example
A biweekly pay date that would fall on Saturday is paid the Friday before; if that Friday is itself a bank holiday, it rolls back again to the Thursday. The generator applies that backward roll to every period in the run, so a published schedule never shows a payday on a day the bank cannot actually move the money.
Frequently asked questions
Do paydays move earlier or later when they hit a holiday?
Earlier. Because funds can only settle on a banking day and employees expect to be paid on or before the due date, a payday on a weekend or bank holiday rolls backward to the prior working day — the opposite of a court or invoice deadline, which rolls forward.
Which pay cycles does it support?
Weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, and monthly. Weekly and biweekly are true fixed-interval cycles, and biweekly is the one that generates the extra-payday months — 26 pay dates in most years, 27 every eleventh or so. Semi-monthly pins paydays to the 15th and the last day of each month, exactly 24 a year. Monthly keeps every payday on the start date’s day of the month: start on Friday 30 January 2026 and the run is 27 February (the 28th is a Saturday, and February has no 30th), then 30 March, 30 April, 29 May (the 30th is a Saturday) and 30 June — a short month or a weekend only moves that one payday, never the ones after it. The result lists every payday that was moved off a weekend or holiday.
How are bank holidays handled across countries?
Select the country whose banking calendar applies and set your workweek, and the backward roll fires on the right non-working days. For the US the tool uses the Federal Reserve’s holiday schedule, because direct deposit settles through the Fed: a Sunday holiday closes the Fed on the Monday after, but a Saturday holiday closes nothing, so the Friday before stays a payday even though federal offices observe the holiday that Friday. State holidays do not close the Fed either. For a multi-country payroll, run each population against its own calendar, since a payday safe in one country can land on a public holiday in another.
Is semi-monthly the same as fortnightly?
No, and the difference compounds. Semi-monthly is 24 pay runs a year on fixed dates; fortnightly is 26 on a fixed cycle. That is two extra pay runs, and fortnightly periods drift against the calendar month while semi-monthly ones do not. Systems configured for one and operated as the other produce a reconciliation problem every year.
What this calculator does not do
A limitation you know about costs far less than one you find after the deadline. These are the specific things this tool cannot work out for you.
- Pay-date rules for a payday falling on a weekend or holiday are an employer convention — some pay early, some pay late. The tool rolls back to the previous working day.
- US paydays follow the Federal Reserve’s banking calendar, so the Friday before a Saturday holiday stays a payday even though federal offices observe the holiday then. An employer that closes that Friday and pays the day before has to move it by hand.
- Semi-monthly periods are not the same length as fortnightly ones, and the two produce a different number of pay runs per year.
Where these rules come from
The periods this calculator applies are taken from the primary sources below rather than from secondary summaries. Verify against them before relying on a date that matters.
- Federal Reserve — holiday schedule
"For holidays falling on Saturday, Federal Reserve Banks and Branches will be open the preceding Friday." For Sunday holidays they close the following Monday.
- US Department of Labor — state payday requirements
Pay frequency and timing are set by state law.