Swooshy, I'm not sure I follow. Suppose you figure out an easy way to calculate dates. 2013-10-28 13:39 to 2013-11-11 11:51, that's 13.9250 days; then you consult that manual tab of dates you want to omit, say one Saturday and two Sundays, and you come up with 10.9250 days. Is that a useful result? I don't see how.

It seems to me that if you don't want to count every calendar day as one day—which is reasonable enough—then you must define for yourself what you do count as a day.

For example, how will 8 hours work for you? If a person works 16 hours on Wednesday, will you count that as two days? If he works four 10-hour days and then goes home Friday, is that five days?

If so, then it's not so hard; you count up the hours a person worked, divide by 8 and presto!, a day count. But if not that, then what exactly?

Or maybe that's what you're asking us, for some advice on how to define a "day"?

the idea is to calculate turn around times which would typically just be the normal working week so weekends excluded however the industry demands that certain weekend days be worked particularly coming up to EOQ so the network days does not accurately fit the needs.

A day is typically 1 set of 24 hours due to the fact that the item may be worked upon by various groups around the globe. this is why a simple hours calculation is not readily appropriate in this regards as the department may be working beyond normal working hours on occasions