Payroll Calendar Generator
Choose a pay frequency and first pay date to map every pay period, payday, and timesheet cutoff for the year, with weekend and holiday shifts applied.
Payroll Calendar Generator
Pay Frequency
Weekly and biweekly schedules run from an anchor pay date. Semi-monthly and monthly schedules run from a day-of-month pattern.
Schedule Setup
Any known payday works. The schedule is projected forward and backward from it, so the anchor can sit in a different year.
A day beyond the length of a short month is moved to that month's last day.
Cutoff and Holiday Rules
Cutoff dates always move earlier, never later, because a cutoff is a deadline.
Extra-paycheck months are counted from scheduled paydays, not from dates that moved for a holiday.
Your Payroll Calendar
| # | Pay period start | Pay period end | Timesheet cutoff | Scheduled pay date | Actual pay date | Note |
|---|
Estimates only. Pay dates are generated from the schedule you enter and the standard federal holiday calendar. Your employer's actual paydays, cutoffs, and holiday adjustments may differ, and this is not tax, legal, or payroll advice. Confirm your schedule with your payroll department.
TimeClock44
Hours Tracker
Have the Hours Ready Before the Cutoff
Knowing the cutoff only helps if the hours are already logged. TimeClock44 records every shift as you work it, so the timesheet is finished before the deadline.
Free · No sign-up needed
How this payroll calendar generator builds your schedule
The generator needs four things: a pay frequency, the calendar year you want, something that anchors the schedule to real dates, and how many days sit between the work and the money. Every date in the table falls out of those four inputs.
For weekly and biweekly payroll, the anchor is a single known payday. It is not a start-of-year marker. The tool steps forward and backward from that date in 7-day or 14-day jumps and keeps every date that lands inside the selected year, so an anchor from last March still produces a correct schedule for next year. Change the year and you do not have to re-enter anything.
Semi-monthly and monthly payroll ignore the anchor completely. Those schedules run on a day-of-month pattern instead (the 1st and 15th, the 15th and the last day, or one chosen day each month), so the tool builds them straight off the calendar. The anchor field disappears when you switch to either one.
Each column answers a different question. Pay period start and end are the days you actually worked, and the timesheet cutoff is your deadline for turning those hours in. There are two pay dates on purpose: the scheduled one is where payroll falls on paper, the actual one is where it lands after weekends and federal holidays get taken into account. When those two disagree, the note column says why.
Weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, and monthly pay schedules compared
Weekly payroll pays 52 times a year (53 in the rare years described below) on the same weekday, with a period of exactly seven days. It is the most expensive to process and the easiest for hourly workers to reconcile, because a pay period is one workweek and overtime lines up perfectly with it.
Biweekly payroll pays 26 times (occasionally 27) every 14 days, again on a fixed weekday. Each period is two whole workweeks, which keeps overtime calculations clean, but paydays drift across the month, so the same bill is not always due in the same part of a pay cycle.
Semi-monthly payroll pays 24 times on fixed dates, so paydays are predictable against rent and mortgage due dates but the weekday moves and period lengths vary between 13 and 16 days. That variability is why semi-monthly is harder for hourly overtime: a pay period can contain a partial workweek. Monthly payroll pays 12 times, one full calendar month per period, and is most common for salaried and executive staff.
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not set a required pay frequency. It requires that wages be paid on the regular payday for the pay period covered. Frequency requirements come from state law instead, and several states set a minimum of semi-monthly or biweekly for some or all workers, so check your state's rule before changing a schedule.
When payday lands on a weekend or federal holiday
Federal holidays under 5 U.S.C. 6103 are New Year's Day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday (Presidents' Day), Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Six of those are pinned to a weekday: the third Monday of January and of February, the last Monday of May, the first Monday of September, the second Monday of October, and the fourth Thursday of November. The other five are pinned to a calendar date, which means they can land on a weekend.
When a fixed-date holiday falls on a Saturday, it is observed on the preceding Friday. When it falls on a Sunday, it is observed on the following Monday. This tool computes all 11 holidays and both observed shifts from the rules, for the year before, the year selected, and the year after, so a January or December adjustment sees the right holidays on either side of the boundary.
Employers usually pay early rather than late when a payday is not a banking day. Direct deposits settle over the ACH network, which does not process on weekends or Federal Reserve holidays, and state wage laws generally require workers to be paid by the regular payday rather than after it. Paying on the previous business day satisfies both constraints, which is why it is the default here.
The shift sometimes has to run more than one day. A Saturday payday in a year where Christmas Day is a Friday cannot move back one day, because that Friday is a holiday too, so the payday lands on the preceding Thursday. The same chaining shows up around New Year's Day and around a Juneteenth or Independence Day weekend. The tool keeps stepping until it reaches a real business day. Pay period start and end dates never move, only the payday and the cutoff.
Planning around 27-paycheck years and three-paycheck months
Twenty-six biweekly cycles of 14 days cover 364 days. A 365-day year has one day left over and a leap year has two, and those leftover days are the entire reason a 27th paycheck can happen. It only happens in one narrow case: the year's first scheduled payday falls on January 1, or on January 1 or 2 in a leap year. Your anchor date decides that, not the year, which is why the office across the street can run biweekly Friday payroll and finish the year with a different count than you do. Weekly payroll runs on the same arithmetic and gets 53 paydays instead of 52.
You may see a claim that a first payday "on or before about January 8" produces 27 paydays. It does not. The count is fixed by the arithmetic above, and the tool reports it directly from the generated schedule rather than from a rule of thumb.
A 27-paycheck year matters most for salaried staff. An annual salary divided across 26 periods produces a per-period amount that, paid 27 times, overpays by roughly 3.8 percent. Per-period deductions like health premiums and flexible spending contributions are usually budgeted on 26 periods too, so employers commonly either re-divide the salary across 27 periods or skip deductions on the extra check. Either way it is a payroll department decision worth asking about early.
Three-paycheck months are the friendlier version of the same drift. On a 26-paycheck biweekly year, exactly two months hold three paydays, roughly six months apart, and your anchor decides which two. Move the anchor by a single week and that pair lands in a different part of the calendar, which is why a generic list of three-paycheck months rarely matches your own schedule. Weekly payroll shows the same effect as five-paycheck months, four or five times a year. Rent and the car payment do not change in those months, so they are the natural place to park a savings transfer or an extra payment on a debt.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about payroll calendar generator
How many biweekly pay periods are in a year?
Usually 26, but sometimes 27, and it depends on your anchor date and the weekday it falls on, not on the year by itself. A common year is 365 days, which is 26 two-week cycles plus one spare day, and a leap year has two spare days. So you only get a 27th paycheck when your first scheduled payday of the year lands on January 1 (or January 1 or 2 in a leap year). Two employers can both run biweekly Friday payroll in the same year and one gets 26 while the other gets 27, purely because their schedules are offset by a week. Weekly payroll works the same way: 52 most years, 53 under the same condition.
Which months have three paychecks?
On a biweekly schedule, exactly two months per 26-paycheck year contain three paydays, and they are always about six months apart. Which two depends entirely on your anchor date. For example, a biweekly Friday schedule whose first 2026 payday is January 2 lands three paychecks in January and July. Shift that same schedule one week later, so the first payday is January 9, and the three-paycheck months become May and October. On a weekly schedule the equivalent is a five-paycheck month, which happens four or five times a year. Generate your calendar above and the tool flags them for you.
What is a payroll cutoff date?
The cutoff (sometimes called the paperwork cutoff or the timesheet deadline) is the last day you can submit hours, corrections, PTO requests, or expense entries for that pay period and still have them appear on the upcoming check. It sits a few days before payday, commonly 3 to 7, so payroll has time to check the hours and get the direct deposit file out the door. Anything submitted after the cutoff normally rolls onto the next paycheck.
What happens when payday falls on a holiday?
The dominant US practice is to pay early, on the last business day before the holiday. Direct deposits move over the ACH network, which only settles on banking business days, so a payday landing on a federal holiday or a weekend cannot fund on time unless payroll is submitted ahead. State wage laws generally require employees to be paid by the regular payday, which is why employers move the date up rather than back. Some employers do pay on the next business day instead, so the tool lets you pick either direction. The holiday pay calculator covers the pay side of the same question.
Do banks close the Friday before a Saturday holiday?
Not entirely. Federal offices observe a Saturday holiday on the preceding Friday, but Federal Reserve Banks stay open that Friday and ACH batches still settle. Saturday, July 4, 2026 is the current example: federal offices are closed Friday, July 3, while the Reserve Banks are open. This tool follows the federal observed-holiday rule because that is what most published employer payroll calendars use, so it treats that Friday as a holiday and moves a Saturday payday back to Thursday, July 2. That errs one business day early rather than late. If your employer processes on the actual Reserve Bank calendar instead, your deposit may simply arrive on Friday, July 3.
What is the difference between semi-monthly and biweekly pay?
Semi-monthly is 24 paychecks a year on fixed dates, usually the 1st and 15th or the 15th and the last day of the month, so the payday weekday moves around and each period covers a slightly different number of days. Biweekly is 26 (occasionally 27) paychecks every 14 days on the same weekday, so periods are always exactly two weeks but paydays drift across the calendar. Semi-monthly is easier for salaried accounting, and biweekly is easier for hourly overtime, because each period is a whole number of workweeks. The pay period converter translates a pay amount between the two.
Do pay period start and end dates move for holidays?
No. Only the pay date and the submission cutoff shift for weekends and holidays. The pay period itself is a fixed block of days, the hours you actually worked, so a period that ends on a Saturday still ends on that Saturday. That is why the calendar can show a period ending Saturday with a payday the following Friday.
Why does my payroll calendar change every year?
Because paydays are tied to weekdays and fixed dates that drift. A biweekly Friday schedule advances by one or two calendar days each year, fixed-date holidays land on different weekdays, and every few years the arithmetic produces a 27th paycheck. Rather than downloading a new template every January, set your frequency and anchor once here and pick the year you need.