How to set up weekend exclusion for metrics

Last updated: October 27, 2026

One organization-wide setting decides whether Span counts Saturdays and Sundays in duration metrics such as PR cycle time, review response time, and issue cycle time. Your organization's time zone decides where each weekend starts and ends.

Why it matters

Duration metrics measure how long work takes. If your teams don't work weekends, a PR opened Friday afternoon and merged Monday morning looks three days long when most of that time was the weekend. Excluding weekends keeps those days from inflating cycle times. Activity metrics such as PRs merged / week measure how much work gets done, and they handle weekends differently, so this setting doesn't touch them.

How it works

With weekends excluded, Span takes the elapsed time between two events and subtracts 24 hours for each Saturday and each Sunday on the calendar from the start date to the end date, using your organization's time zone. With weekends included, the duration is simply end minus start.

Span never excludes nights, evenings, or holidays. It has no working-hours setting.

Metrics the setting changes:

  • PR cycle time and every PR lifecycle stage and range (Coding, Awaiting First Review, Reworking, Idling, Deploying), including the rework breakdowns

  • Review response time

  • Issue cycle time and story and task cycle time

  • Time in To Do, Time in In Progress, Time in Stage, and Issue Lifecycle

Metrics it doesn't change: "/ week" activity rates such as PRs merged / week and PR reviews / week, issue lifetime, mean time to recover, and deployment counts.

Activity rates already account for weekends in their own math. PR, commit, and review rates divide by every day a contributor was available, weekends included, and multiply by 7, so weekend work counts and a week with no weekend work isn't penalized. Calendar metrics such as focus time and meeting hours use weekdays only and multiply by 5. The date range you pick decides which records and days are in scope; the rate always divides by the active days inside that range.

Setup

  1. Go to Settings → Metrics.

  2. Find the Cycle & Response Times: Weekends card.

  3. Turn off Include weekends in PR cycle time, issue cycle time and review response time metrics to exclude weekends. Switch on means weekends are included.

  4. Click Save Changes.

  5. Check your time zone in Settings → Org Calendar → Time Zone. It sets where each weekend starts and ends.

Changing either setting needs the Metrics Configuration permission. Owners and Admins have it, and you can grant it to custom permission groups.

Organizations created through Span's standard setup start with weekends excluded. If the setting was never set, weekends count.

Things to know

  • Worked example: a PR opened Friday 17:00 and merged Monday 09:00 spans 64 hours. Saturday and Sunday drop out whole, 48 hours, so the PR counts as 16 hours. A PR opened Friday 09:00 and merged Monday 09:00 spans 72 hours and counts as 24.

  • Starting or ending on a weekend (PR and review metrics): Span removes a full 24 hours for a weekend day even when the record only touched part of it. A PR stage from Saturday 10:00 to Monday 15:00 spans 53 hours and counts as 5. A stage that starts and ends inside one weekend, or one so short that nothing is left, has no value and drops out of the metric.

  • Starting or ending on a weekend (issue metrics): issue cycle time and story and task cycle time remove only the weekend hours inside the span. Saturday 10:00 to Monday 15:00 counts as 15 hours, and an issue that started and finished inside one weekend counts as 0.

  • The switch label is narrower than the setting: it names PR cycle time, issue cycle time, and review response time, but it also changes every PR lifecycle stage, Time in To Do, Time in In Progress, and Time in Stage.

  • One time zone for everyone: Span uses the organization's time zone, not each person's. For a team far from it, the weekend boundary lands partway through their Friday or Monday.

  • Changes apply to history: Span recomputes PR and review durations from full history after the next data sync, so earlier periods change too.

  • Holidays and time off: company holidays and out-of-office days aren't removed from durations.

Related articles

How do working hours and time zones factor into Span metrics?

How to read Span's "/ week" metrics

PR Lifecycle Metrics

Metrics Settings

Need help?

Contact your Span account team or reach out to support@span.app.