What does a Business Day mean?
A business day mainly refers to the typical hours of operation in a day when normal business operations take place.
A business day is also referred to as a working day because, during this particular day, all the business transactions take place that is important from the perspective of the business.
In this regard, it is important to ensure that business day is not considered to be universal across the world.
However, normally except for weekend (i.e. Saturday and Sunday), all weekdays from Monday through Friday are considered to be Business Days.
Therefore, business day simply be defined as a regular working day in the normal routine of the business, where they operate during their normal routine hours.
In this regard, business day mostly refers to days or time durations where companies are open and accessible to customers.
How long is a Business Day?
A typical business day is mostly between Monday and Friday, and lasts from 9 am to 5 pm. However, if there is a holiday in between, that is not counted as a business day.
A business day is only termed as the day where there are no anomalies in the overall business environment. In the same manner, there is no hard and fast rule about business timings either.
But generally, timings range from 9 am to 5 pm, because these are considered to be the banking hours, during which most financial transactions take place.
In the same manner, it could also be seen that in the current business dynamic, the working style has become a lot agile that what it used to be.
Today, businesses work in different teams, which are often based in different geographic locations. Hence, working in stringent typical business hours is not always possible.
As a result, a lot of businesses adopt flexible working hours, and despite the fact that all financial transactions take place during the normal working hours, yet business hours can be flexible.
Business Day and Business Hours – Are they the same?
Business Day and Business Hours are two different things. Where business day is referred to a day in business, it can be seen that business hours relate to the hours during which the business is operational during business days.
For example, if a car service shop is open every Saturday and Sunday between 9 am to pm, the business days for the car service shop is going to be defined as Saturday and Sunday.
On the contrary, business hours are going to be defined between 9 am and 3 pm. Therefore, there is a clear distinction between both, business days and business hours.
Business Days and International Business
International Trade has exponentially increased over the course of time. As a result, it can be seen that businesses today are more adamant on serving large markets, even if they are situated in other parts of the globe.
However, when conducting international business (particularly with other businesses), it can be seen that there is a need to ensure that businesses have a clear knowledge about the business day in the other company, so that they can carry out transactions accordingly.
If businesses deal with customers directly, that is still different because online shopping platforms facilitate integration across borders that helps businesses to establish sales, regardless of the business day aspect.
What is the importance of Business Days?
If business are integrated across borders today, what is the point of having business days in the first place?
It is important because of the fact that it helps to act as a communicative tool between both the parties. In case of deliverables, the term business days are used, because they help to establish how many actual ‘working’ days are required for the project to be completed.
Similarly, in case of delivery cycles too, business days are used because Sundays and Saturdays are mostly off, and with limited operations, companies don’t usually work on these days.
Hence, for purposes of clarification between both the parties, the concept of business days is used, so that companies can know the exact timeline of a certain project.
Therefore, having a clear idea regarding working business days, especially in international trade is important because of the fact that it helps users to understand how to work with the international counterparts.
For example, in Middle Eastern countries, business days (and the workweek) are from Sunday through Friday, whereas for the rest of the world it is from Monday through Friday (or Saturday).
