Skip to main content

How to use WEEKDAY function to get last Friday in Google Sheets

Labels:

As I manage my stock investment portfolio in Google Sheets, I need to see its evolution over time, for example, in the last year. However, the computation for daily evolution is resource-consuming and might cause performance issues for the spreadsheet. As an alternative, I compute only the weekly evolution of the investment portfolio for the last year. For each week, I compute only the portfolio's value at the end of the Friday. For that, I need a Google Sheets formula to return the last Friday for a given date. This post explains how I do that with the WEEKDAY formula in Google Sheets.

Use WEEKDAY function in Google Sheets to find last Friday

Table of Contents

Concept

To find the last Friday from a date, I need to determine how many days I need to subtract from that date.

  • If the date is Saturday, the last Friday is 1 day before it.
  • If the date is Sunday, the last Friday is 2 days before it.
  • If the date is Monday, the last Friday is 3 days before it.
  • If the date is Tuesday, the last Friday is 4 days before it.
  • If the date is Wednesday, the last Friday is 5 days before it.
  • If the date is Thursday, the last Friday is 6 days before it.
  • If the date is Friday, the last Friday is 7 days before it.

In Google Sheets, the WEEKDAY function returns a number representing the day of the week for a given date. More specifically, if the type is 2, Monday is the first day of the week, and its value is 1, while Sunday is the last day of the week, and its value is 7.

I made a small schema below to explain how to calculate the number of days to subtract based on the WEEKDAY function:

How to use WEEKDAY function in Google Sheets

Formula and demo

Here is the final formula that can be applied on any date to find out the last Friday.

=TODAY()-IF(WEEKDAY(TODAY(),2)>5,WEEKDAY(TODAY(),2)-5,2+WEEKDAY(TODAY(),2))

Conclusion

In the next posts, I will explain how to compute the weekly evolution of a stock investment portfolio in Google Sheets. The formula to find last Friday for a given date presented in this post will be useful.

Disclaimer

The post is only for informational purposes and not for trading purposes or financial advice.

Feedback

If you have any feedback, question, or request please:

Support this blog

If you value my work, please support me with as little as a cup of coffee! I appreciate it. Thank you!

Support AllStacksDeveloper blog a coffee if you find the contents useful!

Share with your friends

If you read it this far, I hope you have enjoyed the content of this post. If you like it, share it with your friends!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts

Compute cost basis of stocks with FIFO method in Google Sheets

Compute cost basis of stocks with FIFO method in Google Sheets

After selling a portion of my holdings in a stock, the cost basis for the remain shares of that stock in my portfolio is not simply the sum of all transactions. When selling, I need to decide which shares I want to sell. One of the most common accounting methods is FIFO (first in, first out), meaning that the shares I bought earliest will be the shares I sell first. As you might already know, I use Google Sheets extensively to manage my stock portfolio investment, but, at the moment of writing this post, I find that Google Sheets does not provide a built-in formula for FIFO. Luckily, with lots of effort, I succeeded in building my own FIFO solution in Google Sheets, and I want to share it on this blog. In this post, I explain how to implement FIFO method in Google Sheets to compute cost basis in stocks investing.
Use SPARKLINE to create 52-week range price indicator chart for stocks in Google Sheets

Use SPARKLINE to create 52-week range price indicator chart for stocks in Google Sheets

The 52-week range price indicator chart shows the relative position of the current price compared to the 52-week low and the 52-week high price. It visualizes whether the current price is closer to the 52-week low or the 52-week high price. In this post, I explain how to create a 52-week range price indicator chart for stocks by using the SPARKLINE function and the GOOGLEFINANCE function in Google Sheets.
Create personal stock portfolio tracker with Google Sheets and Google Data Studio

Create personal stock portfolio tracker with Google Sheets and Google Data Studio

I have been investing in the stock market for a while. I was looking for a software tool that could help me better manage my portfolio, but, could not find one that satisfied my needs. One day, I discovered that the Google Sheets application has a built-in function called GOOGLEFINANCE which fetches current or historical prices of stocks into spreadsheets. So I thought it is totally possible to build my own personal portfolio tracker with Google Sheets. I can register my transactions in a sheet and use the pivot table, built-in functions such as GOOGLEFINANCE, and Apps Script to automate the computation for daily evolutions of my portfolio as well as the current position for each stock in my portfolio. I then drew some sort of charts within the spreadsheet to have some visual ideas of my portfolio. However, I quickly found it inconvenient to have the charts overlapped the table and to switch back and forth among sheets in the spreadsheet. That's when I came to know the existen...
How to convert column index into letters with Google Apps Script

How to convert column index into letters with Google Apps Script

Although Google Sheets does not provide a ready-to-use function that takes a column index as an input and returns corresponding letters as output, we can still do the task by leveraging other built-in functions ADDRESS , REGEXEXTRACT , INDEX , SPLIT as shown in the post . However, in form of a formula, that solution is not applicable for scripting with Google Apps Script. In this post, we look at how to write a utility function with Google Apps Script that converts column index into corresponding letters.
GOOGLEFINANCE Best Practices

GOOGLEFINANCE Best Practices

Anyone using Google Sheets to manage stock portfolio investment must know how to use the GOOGLEFINANCE function to fetch historical prices of stocks. As I have used it extensively to manage my stock portfolio investment in Google Sheets , I have learned several best practices for using the GOOGLEFINANCE function that I would like to share in this post.
Slice array in Google Sheets

Slice array in Google Sheets

Many functions in Google Sheets return an array as the result. However, I find that there is a lack of built-in support functions in Google Sheets when working with an array. For example, the GOOGLEFINANCE function can return the historical prices of a stock as a table of two columns and the first-row being headers Date and Close. How can I ignore the headers or remove the headers from the results?
Manage Stock Transactions With Google Sheets

Manage Stock Transactions With Google Sheets

The first task of building a stock portfolio tracker is to design a solution to register transactions. A transaction is an event when change happens to a stock portfolio, for instance, selling shares of a company, depositing money, or receiving dividends. Transactions are essential inputs to a stock portfolio tracker and it is important to keep track of transactions to make good decisions in investment. In this post, I will explain step by step how to keep track of stock transactions with Google Sheets.
Demo stock investment portfolio tracker with Google Sheets

Demo stock investment portfolio tracker with Google Sheets

As explained in the post Create personal stock portfolio tracker with Google Sheets and Google Data Studio , a personal stock portfolio tracker consists of 2 main elements: a spreadsheet in Google Sheets and an interactive dashboard in Google Data Studio. You can take a look at the sample spreadsheet below to have an idea of how the data is organized and related. It is possible to make a copy of the spreadsheet to study it thoroughly. NOTE: An enhanced version was published at Create personal stock portfolio tracker with Google Sheets and Google Data Studio .
Create a dividend income tracker with Google Sheets by simply using pivot tables

Create a dividend income tracker with Google Sheets by simply using pivot tables

As my investment strategy is to buy stocks that pay regular and stable dividends during a long-term period, I need to monitor my dividends income by stocks, by months, and by years, so that I can answer quickly and exactly the following questions: How much dividend did I receive on a given month and a given year? How much dividend did I receive for a given stock in a given year? Have a given stock's annual dividend per share kept increasing gradually over years? Have a given stock's annual dividend yield been stable over years? In this post, I explain how to create a dividend tracker for a stock investment portfolio with Google Sheets by simply using pivot tables.