How to Use the EOMONTH Function in Google Sheets
The EOMONTH function calculates the last day of a month that is before or after another date. How to use it in Google Sheets.
“End of the month” finds the EOMONTH Google Sheets function. Handling this function is essential for many companies, as many invoices and outgoing invoices are due at the end of the month.
In this guide, we’ll explore how to use the EOMONTH function in Google Sheets using examples. At the end you should understand the core concepts you need for the EOMONTH function. Read on to find out more.
What is the EOMONTH feature and when should you use it?
In Google Sheets, the EOMONTH function is a built-in function that belongs to the category of date functions. The EOMONTH function is primarily used to find the last day of a month that is n months in the past or future. Basically, the EOMONTH function in Google Sheets returns a number containing the end day of the current month and the current month plus n months in the future.
If you’ve quickly added the current time and date to a sheet, EOMONTH can enhance it for billing. You can use the EOMONTH function to determine dates that fall on the last day of the month for purposes such as due dates, expiration dates, and other important financial dates.
Positive values can be used to get past dates while negative values can get a future date. It can also be useful to calculate the difference in dates between months instead of specific dates.
points to consider
- Any day of the first month can serve as the start date. As long as the number of months is the same, the EOMONTH function returns the same result whether you enter “05/03/2022” or “25/02/2022” (in dd/mm/yyyy format) as the start date. .
- If you use a decimal, then the answer for the number of months will be truncated and not rounded. For example, the function converts 5.7 to 5, not 6.
EOMONTH function syntax
The function works with the following syntax:
=EOMONTH (start_date, months)
We will now take a closer look at each sentence to better understand what each sentence means:
- = equal sign: In Google Sheets, the beginning of each function is marked by the equals sign (=), which tells Google Sheets that the cell contains a calculation to perform.
- EOMONTH(): This is the function name that tells Google Sheets what kind of calculation is being performed.
- Start date: This option is necessary. It is the date that serves as the beginning or start date.
- Months: This is a key argument. It is the number of months before or after the start date. A future date is a positive number for the months; a negative number represents an earlier date.
How to use the EOMONTH function in Google Sheets
Calculating the last day of the month is a simple Google Sheet quick hack using the EOMONTH function. It is worth noting that this function takes leap years into account.
Below you will find a step-by-step illustration. In this example, our table already contains the columns Start Date and Months. Please note the design of our date format, DD / MM / YYYY.
- Click an empty cell where you want the result to appear.
- Enter the beginning part of the formula that will be =MONTH(
- The date that the EOMONTH function uses to determine the end date of a month, ie 3.12.2022, should be inserted after the opening parenthesis. Since we already have it in a cell, we can use the cell reference instead of typing the start date. So we add A2 and a comma.
- The second input is the number of months to add or remove from your start date. This is in cell B2 in our example. When you’re done, add a closing parenthesis.
- When you press Enter or To returnyour formula will be calculated automatically and the function will return the desired date in the cell C2.
The formula returns the last day of the month that is “n” months from your start date, as shown in the example above. If a positive number is used instead of the months parameter, additional months are added. Meanwhile, a negative value for the Months parameter returns the value of the previous month.
Find the last day of a month with the EOMONTH function
This article covered all the basics of using the EOMONTH formula in Google Sheets. From here you need to learn more about nesting formulas to combine the EOMONTH function with other functions. There are also many other useful date and time calculations you can do in this powerful spreadsheet program that you should learn next.