Last Day of Month

Use in your stack

# Unix workaround: fire on the 28th-31st, then exit unless today is the last day.
0 0 28-31 * * [ "$(date -d tomorrow +\%d)" = "01" ] && /usr/local/bin/eom-billing.sh

# On macOS / BSD: use date -v
0 0 28-31 * * [ "$(date -v+1d +\%d)" = "01" ] && /usr/local/bin/eom-billing.sh

{ "cron": "0 0 0 L * ?", "timezone": "UTC" }

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: eom-billing
spec:
  # Fires on the 28th-31st; the container script must check whether
  # tomorrow is the 1st before doing any real work.
  schedule: "0 0 28-31 * *"
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          containers:
          - name: billing
            image: my-image:latest
            command: ["/bin/sh", "-c"]
            args:
            - 'if [ "$(date -d tomorrow +%d)" = "01" ]; then /app/eom-billing.sh; fi'
          restartPolicy: OnFailure

# Native L support — runs on the actual last day of every month
cron(0 0 L * ? *)

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 0 L * *")   // Spring supports L in day-of-month
public void endOfMonth() { /* ... */ }

Next runs

Pick a timezone to see when this expression fires next.

Variations

Common use cases

• End-of-month billing, ledger close, or financial reporting.
• Generating reports that need to include the entire month's data.
• Archiving or rotating data on a calendar-month boundary.
• Sending end-of-period reminders or notifications.

Gotchas

• **Standard Unix cron cannot express "last day of month" directly.** The day field is a fixed 1–31, with no awareness of month length. Use a script guard (see Linux example below) or pick a dialect that supports `L`.
• Quartz and AWS EventBridge support `L` in the day-of-month field — `L` means "the last day of the month" (so 28th in non-leap February, 29th in leap February, 30th or 31st depending on the month).
• Quartz also supports `LW` — "the last weekday of the month." If the last day falls on a weekend, the job runs on the closest preceding Friday instead.
• For Kubernetes CronJob (which uses Unix syntax), the standard workaround is `0 0 28-31 * *` with an in-script check that today's date is the last day.

Frequently asked questions