Public holiday vs bank holiday vs observance
Compare holiday labels before using a country-year holiday table for business-day checks.
Why this matters
This guide defines common holiday labels before scheduling or marking CSV dates.
Holiday labels vary
Public holiday, bank holiday, observance, national holiday, and regional holiday are not interchangeable across countries. A source can contain national rows, regional rows, or local rows depending on coverage.
Business-day use
A practical business-day check usually starts with Monday-Friday and subtracts public holidays for the selected country. This is useful for planning and data QA, but it is not a payroll, banking settlement, or legal calendar.
Review fields
When exporting holiday rows, keep date, name, local name, type, scope, counties or regions, source, and snapshot date. These fields make downstream review possible.
Why labels differ
Holiday terminology is local. A public holiday may close government offices, a bank holiday may affect financial settlement, and an observance may be culturally important without closing businesses. Some countries publish national and regional rows, while others separate substitute days, school holidays, or religious observances. UDataX keeps the source type and scope fields visible so users can see whether a row is national, regional, public, or another source-provided category.
Business-day interpretation
The UDataX business-day check starts with a simple rule: Monday through Friday, minus public holidays in the selected generated snapshot. That rule is useful for planning, QA, and CSV tagging. It is not a payroll calendar, banking settlement calendar, court calendar, or legal deadline calculator. If a process depends on observed days, substitute days, half days, regional offices, or financial market closures, verify with the authority that governs that process.
Export fields to keep
A useful holiday export should keep country, year, date, local_name, name, types, global scope, counties or regions, source, and generated_at. For a date checker, keep weekday, is_weekend, is_public_holiday, matched_holiday_names, is_business_day, and next_business_day. These fields make it possible to explain why a date was marked as working or non-working. Avoid exporting only a yes/no result without the matching holiday row.
Common review cases
Review dates near weekends, year boundaries, regional holidays, and source rows that are not typed as Public. Also review countries where the source has fewer rows than expected. A holiday table can be complete enough for operational planning but still not complete enough for regulated workflows. When in doubt, keep the row in a review file and include a note that the result comes from a generated public holiday snapshot.
Source basis
UDataX holiday workflows use generated Nager.Date public holiday snapshots for selected countries and years. The data is suitable for planning, reporting, and business-day review, but holiday rules are local and sometimes depend on region, observed dates, bank calendars, or government decisions. UDataX keeps source, year, country, type, and scope fields visible so users can understand what was matched rather than relying on an unexplained yes or no.
How this connects to the tools
Use Time and Holidays to inspect one country-year table, check one date, or export a reference list for a spreadsheet. For CSV workflows, prepare country and date columns first, normalize dates to YYYY-MM-DD, and keep unmatched or unsupported rows in review. The business-day result should include the weekday, weekend flag, public holiday flag, matched holiday names, source, and generated date so the decision can be audited later. This makes spreadsheet filters and downstream QA rules easier to explain.
Acceptance criteria for production use
A holiday or business-day result is ready for scheduling support, reporting, and data QA when the country, date, source year, matched holiday names, and public-holiday status are present. It is not ready for payroll, settlement, statutory deadlines, court filings, or financial-market operations without checking the relevant official calendar. Observed dates, substitute holidays, and regional closures should always be reviewed when the outcome has operational or legal impact. Keep the generated_at value and selected year in exports so old holiday snapshots can be identified later.
Examples
- 1US 2026
17 generated holiday rows - 2Singapore 2026
10 generated holiday rows