The formula, in words
- Three of the four clocks are counted in calendar days and one is counted in banking days. The presentation period and the tenor run on calendar days from an event; the credit runs to a fixed calendar date; the examination window runs on banking days at the place the examining happens. A weekend inside the fourth of those moves its end and moves nothing else.
- The presentation has two bounds and the earlier one binds. Where a presentation includes an original transport document governed by the relevant transport articles, it must generally be made within twenty one calendar days of shipment and in every case not later than expiry; a credit may also state a shorter period of its own. Three limits, and a distant expiry does not make a distant deadline.
- The examination window starts where your window stops. It is counted from the day of presentation, so it never extends the presentation period, cannot repair a presentation made too late, and is not shortened by an expiry that has already passed. Its last day is the preclusion point, which is the last day on which a refusal can be given and relied on.
- Maturity is its own clock and it usually ends last. Under a credit with a tenor the amount falls due at maturity, counted from a base the credit has to define in documentary terms. On the dates this page opens with, maturity is thirty five days past the preclusion point, which is the distance between a decision and a payment.
A worked example
The calendar. 1 March is a Sunday in this scenario. Saturdays and Sundays are the non banking days on the default setting. No bank holiday exists on this page.
Clock 1, the presentation period. Shipped 12 March, a Thursday. The period is twenty one calendar days. Nineteen of them reach 31 March, the twentieth is 1 April and the twenty first is 2 April, a Thursday.
Clock 2, the expiry. 10 April, a Friday, as typed.
Which of the two binds. The presentation has to beat both, so the earlier binds: 2 April, which is eight days before the expiry. A comfortable expiry did not make a comfortable deadline, and the date in the diary was never the deadline.
Clock 3, the examination window. Presented 30 March, a Monday, three days inside the binding date. Five banking days follow, and banking days are not calendar days:
4 and 5 April are a Saturday and a Sunday and are skipped, so the fifth banking day is 6 April. The window spans seven calendar days to hold five banking days, and the two days it gained came from a weekend nobody worked. 6 April is the preclusion point.
Where the preclusion point sits. It is four days after the presentation period ended on 2 April and four days before the credit expires on 10 April. It is not the same day as either, it does not extend either, and it is not a date the presenter can act on.
Clock 4, maturity. The tenor is sixty calendar days from the shipment date. Nineteen days reach 31 March, thirty more reach 30 April, and eleven more reach 11 May, a Monday.
The two numbers worth carrying
- The deadline is 2 April, not 10 April. The presentation period took eight days off the date in the diary, and it took them at the front of the job rather than the end.
- The money falls due 11 May, which is thirty five days after the preclusion point and thirty one days after the expiry. The fifth banking day was the last day a refusal could arrive. It was never the day of payment, and on these dates it was five weeks early.
The check that makes it stick. Type 15 into the presentation period. The last day to present moves from 2 April to 27 March, which is three days before the date presented, so the presentation now falls outside the period. The examination window does not move, because it counts from the day of presentation. Maturity does not move, because it counts from the shipment date.
Two of the four clocks are wholly independent of your deadline, and changing your deadline told you nothing about either.
Check it yourself
Five banking days span seven calendar days whichever two days the weekend takes, because a five day count crosses exactly one weekend either way. The convention changes which dates are closed, not how long the window is, and it starts to matter only when a date you typed lands on one of them.
What this does not model
A bank holiday of any kind; an expiry or a deadline falling on a day the bank is closed and any extension that would follow; a place of presentation different from the place of expiry; a presentation date that itself falls on a non banking day, which the page names but counts through as typed; the derivation of the shipment date from a particular transport document, which decides what two of these clocks count from; a presentation of copies rather than originals, which changes whether the twenty one day period is triggered at all; amendments; confirmation, transfer and assignment; instalments and partial shipment; prepayment or discounting of a deferred undertaking before maturity; a court order or other external direction, which sits on a separate layer and can stop a payment without touching any of these dates; the content of any document; and how any presentation would be read by anyone, which this page does not examine and does not report.