Glossary

Business Day

When dealing with many organizations you’ll run into the concept known as a “business day.” This is an important designation to understand. Federal Reserve banks observe all national holidays and are closed on the weekends. The first thing to keep in mind is that Saturday and Sunday will never count as business days. That means that Monday is the first business day following Friday.

There are approximately 15 national, regional, or public holidays in the United States. These days do not count as business days and the banks are closed on these occasions. All 11 national holidays are celebrated in all 50 states. When a national holiday ends up being on a Saturday, it’s held on Friday instead. In the event of it falling on Sunday, it’s bumped to Monday for the observance. State holidays are not observed by the post office or banks, although many private businesses will close on those days. You can always check a holiday calendar or contact your bank specifically to ask them whether they’ll be open on a certain day.

On business days which are not holidays, weekends, or special days where the bank has decided to close, any person with an account can present their transactions to the bank for approval. Business days can be confusing if they’re ignored. People may wait for a transaction to go through, only to find out it hasn’t happened yet. If you ever have a question about processing times, ask the institution to give you the specifics. Financial companies follow “business day conventions” which govern how they handle all transactions. For many credit card processing companies, approvals are done at the time of the sale. When checking your statements, you may notice that credit transactions take several days to go through. This is a normal part of the process for credit transactions.

It’s useful to familiarize yourself with your statements and to keep track of your transactions. You can avoid ever going over your limit if you pay attention to business days conventions and your current transaction totals. The process is easier than ever to track because of online access.