Counting "Working Days" for RTA Notices: The Rule That Only Bites at the Deadline (NZ)

Most landlords count working days the way they count them at work: Monday to Friday, skip the public holidays everyone knows, done. The Residential Tenancies Act's definition is stricter, and the extra pieces are exactly the ones a manual count misses.

What "working day" actually excludes

Under section 2 of the RTA, a working day excludes:

• Saturdays and Sundays
• Waitangi Day and Anzac Day (moved to the following Monday if either falls on a weekend)
• the Sovereign's Birthday and Labour Day
• Matariki / Te Ra Aro ki a Matariki, a date set years in advance by the government rather than a formula you can calculate yourself
• every day from Good Friday to the Tuesday after Easter, inclusive - not just the public holidays inside that block
• every day from 24 December to 3 January, inclusive - the whole block, not just Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day
• the regional anniversary day observed where the property is

That last one is the one that trips people up, because it depends on the property's location rather than a national calendar, and because it does not always have an obvious name.

The regional anniversary trap

Every region observes a provincial anniversary day, but the regions do not map cleanly onto the names people search for. A few examples:

• Northland does not have its own anniversary day. It observes Auckland Anniversary Day, along with Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and the central North Island. A landlord who searches "Northland anniversary day" and finds nothing region-specific often concludes there isn't one to worry about - there is, it just goes by a different name.
• Canterbury's anniversary is Show Day: the Friday ten days after the first Tuesday in November, not a fixed date.
• Hawke's Bay observes the Friday before Labour Day, which sits right next to a holiday most people already track, making it easy to double-count or miss entirely.
• Wellington, Manawatu, Wairarapa and Whanganui all share the same anniversary (the Monday nearest 22 January), while Nelson, Tasman and Buller share another (nearest 1 February).

If a notice period runs through the wrong week and the regional day is not excluded, the notice is short by one working day. The Tribunal does not treat that as a rounding error.

Where this actually decides a case

Working-day counting rarely matters day to day. It matters at the threshold, and the threshold usually only gets tested when there is a dispute. The main place it bites:

• Rent arrears strikes (s.55(1)(aa)). Once rent is at least five working days overdue, a landlord can issue an arrears notice. Three notices within a 90-day period can support a Tribunal application to end the tenancy. If the fifth working day was miscounted, one of those three notices was issued a day early, and a tenant's advocate checking the dates can get the whole strike thrown out.
• Any notice with a working-day deadline, rather than a calendar-day one. Most RTA notice periods (60 days for a rent increase, 90 or 42 days to end a periodic tenancy, 14 days to remedy a breach) run on calendar days and do not need this calculation at all. The regional-anniversary trap is specific to the working-day notices, which is exactly why it is easy to forget it applies differently.

Because it is a threshold test, it is invisible until someone checks it - and the person most likely to check it is a tenant's advocate preparing to contest an arrears-based termination at the Tribunal.

A worked example

Rent is due Thursday, 15 January 2026, in Wellington. The landlord wants to know when the fifth working day is reached, to send the first arrears notice.

Wellington Anniversary Day in 2026 falls on Monday 19 January (the Monday nearest 22 January). Counting forward from Friday 16 January and skipping that Monday: Friday (1), Tuesday 20th (2), Wednesday 21st (3), Thursday 22nd (4), Friday 23rd (5). Day 5 lands on Friday 23 January. A landlord who did not know about the regional anniversary and counted straight through the Monday would land on Thursday 22 January instead - a notice sent a day early.

Run the same rent-due date for an Auckland property and the anniversary falls on a different Monday (26 January, the Monday nearest 29 January), which sits outside this particular window, so nothing is skipped and day 5 is Thursday 22 January. Same due date, same rule, two different working-day-5 dates, purely because of where the property sits.

How RentManager handles this

RentManager works out the property's region from its address and applies the correct anniversary day automatically when it calculates the rent-arrears timeline, alongside the public holidays and the Easter and Christmas blocks. The arrears schedule shown against a tenancy already reflects the right working-day count for that property, not a national approximation, so the notice dates it proposes are the ones that hold up if a tenant challenges them at the Tribunal. See the rent arrears playbook for the wider process, and the Tribunal evidence checklist for what to bring if it gets that far.

FAQ

Q: What counts as a "working day" under the Residential Tenancies Act?
A: Any day that is not a Saturday, Sunday, public holiday, the Good Friday-to-Easter-Tuesday block, the 24 December-to-3 January block, or the regional anniversary day for the property's area.

Q: Does every region have its own anniversary day?
A: No. Several regions share one: Northland, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and the central North Island all observe Auckland Anniversary Day rather than a region-specific one.

Q: Why does the regional anniversary day matter for rent arrears?
A: Section 55(1)(aa) lets a landlord issue an arrears notice once rent is at least five working days overdue. If the regional anniversary falls inside that window and is not excluded, the notice can be issued a day early and be challengeable.

Q: Are the 60-day, 90-day and 42-day notice periods affected by this too?
A: No, those are calendar-day periods, not working-day periods, so the regional anniversary rule does not apply to them.