In today’s post we will discuss two date functions, which can be useful to manipulate dates from a start date whether synchronizing data to the last of the month or counting months from a specific date.
If you have a transaction that is entered on a specific date but you prefer to have the transaction recorded on the last day of the month you can use the EOMONTH Function, which stands for end of month. THE EOMONTH function is:
= EOMONTH(start_date, months).
The inputs are defined as:
start_date – is the date from which the months will be counted and the end of that month will be returned.
months – Is defined by the number of months before or after the start date. A negative number indicates dates prior to the start date and a positive number indicates months after the start date. A zero (0) value will return the last date of for the month of the start date.
The EDATE function is similar to the EOMONTH function, but it returns dates that are exactly a month prior to or after the start date. The EDATE function is:
= EDATE (start_date, months)
The inputs are defined identical to the inputs in the EOMONTH function.
These date functions are incredibly useful for normalizing transactions that occur at the end of the month or reoccur on a specific day every month.
Download a sample spreadsheet of this tutorial
