Three-Paycheck Months in 2027: Biweekly Payday Calendar Spreadsheet (Excel & Google Sheets)

Short on time? The 2027 Budget Planner ($12.99) is the finished, tested version of what this tutorial builds.

If you're paid every two weeks, most months bring two paychecks, but two months a year usually bring three. Budget the year on two checks a month and those third checks arrive with nothing planned for them, which makes them the easiest money of the year to send to an emergency fund, a debt or a sinking fund. Which months they are depends on your own first payday, so a list from someone else's calendar is only right if your payday matches theirs.

This tutorial builds a one-tab payday calendar that works it out for any year and any schedule: the paychecks in each month, the date of each extra one, how many paychecks you get in the year, and how much "extra" pay that is. It uses only DATE, EOMONTH, INT, ROUNDUP, IF, MAX, SUM and COUNTIF, so it works the same in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice. To test it, we built a workbook with these exact formulas, recalculated it in LibreOffice, and compared every cell to the examples below and to an independent Python model that lists every payday one by one, on all 14 possible every-two-weeks schedules and all 7 weekly schedules in 2027, plus 40 randomized years and schedules.

1. Settings (top of the tab)

B1 (Year):                     2027
B2 (A payday):                 2027-01-08
B3 (Days between pays):        14
B4 (Take-home per paycheck):   2400
B5 (Paychecks you budget on):  2

A payday is any real payday on your schedule. Your first payday of the year is the obvious choice, but any earlier one works too (for example your last payday of the previous year), because the formulas count forward from it. Days between pays is 14 for every two weeks or 7 for weekly. Paychecks you budget on is how many checks your monthly budget assumes: 2 for every two weeks, 4 for weekly.

This calendar is for every-two-weeks and weekly pay. If you're paid twice a month (say the 1st and 15th) or monthly, every month has the same number of paychecks and there are no extra ones.

2. The month table

Row 7 holds the headers: Month, Month start, Month end, Paychecks, First payday, Extra paycheck dates, Extra paychecks, Extra pay. Type 1 to 12 in A8:A19, put these formulas in row 8 and fill them down to row 19:

B8 (Month start):           =DATE($B$1,A8,1)
C8 (Month end):             =EOMONTH(B8,0)
D8 (Paychecks):             =IF(C8<$B$2,0,INT((C8-$B$2)/$B$3)+1)-IF(B8-1<$B$2,0,INT((B8-1-$B$2)/$B$3)+1)
E8 (First payday):          =IF(D8=0,"",IF(B8<=$B$2,$B$2,$B$2+$B$3*ROUNDUP((B8-$B$2)/$B$3,0)))
F8 (Extra paycheck dates):  =IF(D8<=$B$5,"",TEXT(E8+$B$3*$B$5,"mmm d")&IF(D8>$B$5+1,", "&TEXT(E8+$B$3*($B$5+1),"mmm d"),""))
G8 (Extra paychecks):       =MAX(0,D8-$B$5)
H8 (Extra pay):             =G8*$B$4

Paychecks counts the paydays from your payday in B2 up to the month's last day, minus the ones before the month's first day. INT((date-B2)/B3)+1 is the number of paydays from B2 through that date, and the IF(...<$B$2,0,...) parts return 0 for dates before B2, so months before your payday count nothing. EOMONTH(B8,0) is the last day of the month in Excel (Microsoft's EOMONTH help) and in Google Sheets (Google's EOMONTH help), so February and leap years need no special case.

First payday jumps from B2 to the first payday on or after the month start: the days between them divided by the pay interval, rounded up to a whole number of pay periods. Extra paycheck dates lists the paydays beyond the ones you budget on (the third check in a biweekly month, the fifth in a weekly one), up to two of them, which is all a month can have when you budget on 2 checks every two weeks or 4 weekly ones. Extra paychecks always has the full count. Format column E as a date. If your sheet shows mmm d literally, your spreadsheet's locale uses other date codes; drop the TEXT part and use a date column instead.

3. Totals for the year

Below the table:

B21 (Paychecks in the year):       =SUM(D8:D19)
B22 (Months with an extra check):  =COUNTIF(G8:G19,">0")
B23 (Extra pay for the year):      =SUM(H8:H19)
B24 (Monthly budget on B5 checks): =B5*B4
B25 (True monthly average):        =B21*B4/12

B24 is what your monthly budget should be built on. B25 is your real average, which is higher because of the extra checks. Budgeting on B25 instead of B24 is the usual mistake: it spends the extra checks twelve times a year in small pieces, and the months with only two checks come up short.

Worked example: paid every two weeks from Friday, January 8, 2027

Settings as above: year 2027, a payday on 2027-01-08, every 14 days, $2,400 a check, budget on 2 checks.

Totals: 26 paychecks in the year, 2 months with an extra check (April and October), $4,800 of extra pay. The monthly budget on two checks is $4,800, while the true monthly average is $5,200. Typing the last payday of 2026, 2026-12-25, into B2 gives exactly the same table.

When 2027 has 27 paychecks

January 1, 2027 is a Friday. If your every-two-weeks schedule lands on 2027-01-01, the year's paydays run from January 1 to December 31 and you get 27 paychecks, with extra checks in January, July and December. With the same $2,400 a check, that's $7,200 of extra pay. Of the 14 possible every-two-weeks schedules in 2027, this is the only one with 27 paydays; the other 13 have 26.

Two cautions before you plan on it. January 1 is a bank holiday, and many employers pay the business day before, which moves that check into 2026. And some salaried employers divide the annual salary by the number of paychecks in the year, so a 27-paycheck year can mean 27 slightly smaller checks rather than one extra one. Check with your payroll team.

Weekly pay works the same way: set B3 to 7 and B5 to 4. Paid every Friday in 2027, you get 53 paychecks, and January, April, July, October and December each have five.

Common mistakes

• Using someone else's list of three-paycheck months. Two people paid every two weeks, one week apart, get different months. The table above depends only on your own payday.
• Typing the payday as text. "Jan 8" typed as text makes every comparison fail. Format B2 as a date and check that =ISNUMBER(B2) says TRUE.
• Putting a future payday in B2. Months before B2 count zero paychecks. Use your first payday of the year, or any earlier one.
• Budgeting on the yearly average. See section 3. Plan the month on B24 and give every extra check a job before it arrives.

Want it done for you?

The 2027 Budget Planner does this on its Paychecks tab for weekly, every-two-weeks, twice-a-month and monthly pay: it lists every payday of the year with the bills due before the next one, highlights the months with an extra paycheck, and splits what's left after bills 50/30/20. It also covers categories, sinking funds, debt payoff and an annual dashboard. But the table above is a complete payday calendar on its own.

Not financial advice. This is a budgeting method; check payroll questions with your employer.

Written with AI assistance. Every formula, command and number on this page was tested before publishing (see each section). Product links go to our store.