SOQL: A Guide to Date Literals

Published 26/09/2025 & Updated 02/07/2026 · By James Winter

---

In Salesforce, filtering by date is a daily task. Date literals in SOQL let you match common ranges (last month, this quarter, the last 90 days) without hard-coding calendar values. After summarising data with aggregate functions, date literals are the natural next step for time-based WHERE filters that stay correct as the clock moves.

📅 What are Date Literals?

Date literals are predefined keywords you use in WHERE clauses on date and date/time fields. Salesforce resolves them relative to the current date (and your org’s fiscal calendar settings where applicable), so the same query returns the right window tomorrow as it does today.

Syntax is typically an equality filter:

WHERE CreatedDate = LAST_MONTH

You can also combine date literals with AND, OR, and other filters for more precise queries.

---

📆 Fixed Date Literals

Fixed literals name a single calendar period: a day, week, month, quarter, or year. Each range starts at midnight and has a defined end.

🌅 Days and Weeks

• YESTERDAY: Starts at 12:00 AM on the day before the current day and continues for 24 hours.
• TODAY: Starts at 12:00 AM on the current day and continues for 24 hours.
• TOMORROW: Starts at 12:00 AM on the day after the current day and continues for 24 hours.
• LAST_WEEK: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the previous week and continues for 7 days.
• THIS_WEEK: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the current week and continues for 7 days.
• NEXT_WEEK: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the next week and continues for 7 days.

SELECT Id, Subject, ActivityDate, Owner.Name
FROM Task
WHERE ActivityDate = THIS_WEEK

This query returns Tasks due at any point in the current week. Swap the literal for TODAY to narrow it to a single day, or NEXT_WEEK to look ahead, without touching the rest of the query.

Your locale determines the first day of the week for these literals (Sunday for US English, Monday for New Zealand English). If you have no personal locale set, Salesforce uses the org locale.

📋 Months and Rolling Windows

• LAST_MONTH: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the previous month and continues until the end of the last day of that month.
• THIS_MONTH: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the current month and continues until the end of the last day of that month.
• NEXT_MONTH: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the next month and continues until the end of the last day of that month.
• LAST_90_DAYS: Starts at 12:00 AM 90 days before the current day and continues up to the current moment. The range includes today.
• NEXT_90_DAYS: Starts at 12:00 AM on the day after the current day and continues for the next 90 days. The range does not include today.

SELECT Id, Name, Status, CreatedDate
FROM Lead
WHERE CreatedDate = LAST_90_DAYS
AND Status = 'Open - Not Contacted'

This query returns Leads created in the rolling 90-day window up to right now, including any created today, whose status is Open - Not Contacted. Lead Status values are configurable, so use the equivalent value from your org. LAST_MONTH in the same slot would answer a different question: the whole of the previous calendar month, and nothing from this one.

📊 Quarters and Fiscal Quarters

• THIS_QUARTER: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the current quarter and continues until the last day of that quarter.
• LAST_QUARTER: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the previous quarter and continues until the last day of that quarter.
• NEXT_QUARTER: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the next quarter and continues until the last day of that quarter.
• THIS_FISCAL_QUARTER: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the current fiscal quarter and continues until the last day of that quarter.
• LAST_FISCAL_QUARTER: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the previous fiscal quarter and continues until the last day of that quarter.
• NEXT_FISCAL_QUARTER: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the next fiscal quarter and continues until the last day of that quarter.

SELECT Id, Name, Amount, StageName, CloseDate
FROM Opportunity
WHERE CloseDate = THIS_FISCAL_QUARTER
AND StageName = 'Closed Won'

This query returns won Opportunities closing in the current fiscal quarter. Change the literal to THIS_QUARTER and the same query reports on calendar quarters instead. If your org’s fiscal year does not start in January, these two return different rows, so pick the one the business actually reports on.

🏦 Calendar and Fiscal Years

• THIS_YEAR: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the current year and continues until the last day of that year.
• LAST_YEAR: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the previous year and continues until the last day of that year.
• NEXT_YEAR: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the next year and continues until the last day of that year.
• THIS_FISCAL_YEAR: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the current fiscal year and continues until the last day of that fiscal year.
• LAST_FISCAL_YEAR: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the previous fiscal year and continues until the last day of that fiscal year.
• NEXT_FISCAL_YEAR: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the next fiscal year and continues until the last day of that fiscal year.

---

🔢 Dynamic Date Literals

Dynamic literals take a positive integer n to define a range relative to today. Use them when fixed periods like LAST_MONTH are too broad or too narrow.

SELECT Id, CaseNumber, Subject, Status, CreatedDate
FROM Case
WHERE CreatedDate = LAST_N_DAYS:7
AND Status != 'Closed'

The :n suffix supplies the count, with no space around the colon. This query returns open Cases created from midnight seven days ago through the current moment. This is seven complete prior days plus the elapsed portion of today. That spans eight calendar dates, which is a common source of confusion, so check the section below for which literals include the current period.

• LAST_N_DAYS:n: Starts at 12:00 AM n days before the current day and continues up to the current moment. The range includes today. For example, LAST_N_DAYS:10 covers the last 10 days and today, 11 days of data in total.
• NEXT_N_DAYS:n: Starts at 12:00 AM on the day after the current day and continues for the next n days. The range does not include today.
• N_DAYS_AGO:n: The single day that was n days before today (24 hours starting at 12:00 AM that day). Does not include today.
• LAST_N_WEEKS:n: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the week n weeks ago and continues through the end of the week before the current week. Does not include the current week.
• NEXT_N_WEEKS:n: Starts at 12:00 AM on the first day of the week after the current week and continues for the next n weeks. Does not include the current week.
• N_WEEKS_AGO:n: The week that was n weeks before the current week (7 days from the first day of that week).

• LAST_N_MONTHS:n: From the first day of the month n months ago through the end of the month before the current month. Does not include the current month.
• NEXT_N_MONTHS:n: From the first day of the month after the current month through the end of the n-month span ahead. Does not include the current month.
• N_MONTHS_AGO:n: The full calendar month that was n months before the current month.
• NEXT_N_QUARTERS:n: From the first day of the quarter after the current quarter through the end of the n-quarter span ahead. Does not include the current quarter.
• LAST_N_QUARTERS:n: From the first day of the quarter n quarters ago through the end of the quarter before the current quarter. Does not include the current quarter.
• N_QUARTERS_AGO:n: The full quarter that was n quarters before the current quarter.
• NEXT_N_FISCAL_QUARTERS:n: From the first day of the fiscal quarter after the current fiscal quarter through the end of the n fiscal-quarter span ahead. Does not include the current fiscal quarter.
• LAST_N_FISCAL_QUARTERS:n: From the first day of the fiscal quarter n fiscal quarters ago through the end of the fiscal quarter before the current one. Does not include the current fiscal quarter.
• N_FISCAL_QUARTERS_AGO:n: The full fiscal quarter that was n fiscal quarters before the current fiscal quarter.
• LAST_N_YEARS:n: Ends on 31 December of the year before the current year. The documented start is 12:00 AM on 1 January n + 1 years ago, which makes LAST_N_YEARS:1 span the two previous calendar years (see the caution below). Does not include the current year.
• NEXT_N_YEARS:n: From 1 January of the year after the current year through the end of the n-year span ahead. Does not include the current year.
• N_YEARS_AGO:n: The full calendar year that was n years before the current year.
• NEXT_N_FISCAL_YEARS:n: From the first day of the fiscal year after the current fiscal year through the end of the n fiscal-year span ahead. Does not include the current fiscal year.
• LAST_N_FISCAL_YEARS:n: From the first day of the fiscal year n fiscal years ago through the end of the fiscal year before the current one. Does not include the current fiscal year.
• N_FISCAL_YEARS_AGO:n: The full fiscal year that was n fiscal years before the current fiscal year.

---

💻 SOQL Query Examples

📥 Accounts created last month

SELECT Id, Name, CreatedDate FROM Account WHERE CreatedDate = LAST_MONTH

Returns all Account records created in the previous calendar month (for example, in August this returns July creations).

📝 Accounts modified in the last 10 days

SELECT Id, Name, LastModifiedDate FROM Account WHERE LastModifiedDate = LAST_N_DAYS:10

Returns Accounts modified in the rolling window covering the last 10 days and today, since LAST_N_DAYS includes the current day.

🎯 Opportunities closing next week

SELECT Id, Name, CloseDate FROM Opportunity WHERE CloseDate = NEXT_N_WEEKS:1

Returns Opportunities with a close date in the upcoming week (from the first day of next week through the end of that week, with your locale determining which day a week starts on).

📌 Month to date

There is no month-to-date literal, so build one by capping THIS_MONTH at today:

SELECT Id, Name, Amount, CloseDate
FROM Opportunity
WHERE CloseDate = THIS_MONTH
AND CloseDate <= TODAY

THIS_MONTH on its own covers the entire calendar month, including days that have not happened yet, which matters on any field that can hold future dates such as CloseDate. The second predicate closes the window at the end of today. This works because relational operators against a date literal compare with the edge of that literal’s range: <= TODAY means “up to the end of today”, while < TODAY would stop at midnight this morning and drop today’s records entirely. The same pattern with THIS_YEAR gives you year to date.

🔬 Seeing the boundary in the Developer Console

The surest way to trust a date literal is to watch it move. To show the today boundary in action, I created two Account records today, then ran the two counts back to back in the Developer Console against the same org:

LAST_N_DAYS:30 includes today, so both accounts created today are in the count.

LAST_MONTH covers only the previous calendar month, so today’s two accounts are excluded.

This org held only those two records, so LAST_N_DAYS:30 returns 2 while LAST_MONTH returns 0: the accounts created today count towards the rolling window and are excluded from the previous calendar month. In a populated org the two totals would not line up so neatly, because the windows cover different date ranges, but the behaviour that matters is the same, today’s records count for LAST_N_DAYS and never for LAST_MONTH. That is exactly the today-inclusion behaviour the table below describes.

---

🧭 Which Literal for Which Reporting Ask

Date literals are easy to look up but easy to misapply, because the label rarely matches the business question word for word. This table maps the asks that come up most often to the literal that answers them, and the boundary detail that catches people out.

Business ask	Reach for	Watch out for
Records dated today	= TODAY	Resolves in the running user’s timezone, so it is already local-correct.
Yesterday only	= YESTERDAY	A single 24-hour window, nothing before or after.
One specific day, n days back	= N_DAYS_AGO:n	One day only, and it excludes today.
Rolling “last 30 days”	= LAST_N_DAYS:30	Includes today, so it actually spans 31 calendar days (30 days ago through now).
The previous full calendar month	= LAST_MONTH	The whole prior month, not “the last 30 days”.
Month to date (1st through today)	no dedicated literal	= THIS_MONTH works only if the field cannot hold future dates; otherwise it also pulls records dated later this month.
The current quarter	= THIS_QUARTER (or = THIS_FISCAL_QUARTER)	Pick the fiscal variant if the business reports on a fiscal calendar set in Setup.
The upcoming week’s work	= NEXT_WEEK (or = NEXT_N_WEEKS:1)	Starts on the first day of next week, not a rolling seven days from today.
The next 7 days	= NEXT_N_DAYS:7	Starts tomorrow; today is excluded entirely.
This calendar year	= THIS_YEAR	Includes future-dated records in the year; for year to date, bound it the same way as month to date.

---

From experience

I once had a reconciliation extract between Salesforce and an ERP that failed to line up. It ran on the 1st of each month to pull the previous month’s data, and the date literal we used was counting a different range than we intended, so the numbers came out off even though the two systems should have matched. Swapping the literal for an explicit first-of-month to last-of-month range settled it:

SELECT Id, Name, Amount, CreatedDate
FROM Opportunity
WHERE CreatedDate >= 2025-07-01T00:00:00Z
AND CreatedDate < 2025-08-01T00:00:00Z

Two things make this reliable. Bounding with >= the first of the month and < the first of the next month means you never have to work out whether the month ends on the 28th, 30th or 31st, and no record can land on both sides of the boundary. And the Z pins the window to UTC rather than the running user’s timezone, so the extract matched the same absolute range whoever or whatever ran it, which is the whole point when you are reconciling against another system. Date literals are the right default for everyday reporting; for a machine-to-machine extract that has to agree with a system outside Salesforce, spell the range out.

💡 Practical Tips

• Know the period, not just the label: LAST_MONTH is the full previous calendar month, not “the last 30 days.” Use LAST_N_DAYS:n when you need a rolling day count.
• Know which literals include today: LAST_N_DAYS and LAST_90_DAYS run through the current moment, so today’s records are in scope. NEXT_N_DAYS and NEXT_90_DAYS start tomorrow and exclude today entirely. For weeks, months, quarters, and years, both the LAST_N and NEXT_N variants exclude the current period altogether: LAST_N_WEEKS:2 never returns records from the current week.
• Fiscal literals follow org settings: THIS_FISCAL_QUARTER and related literals depend on your org’s fiscal year configuration in Setup.
• Combine with other filters: Date literals work well alongside ownership, status, and relationship filters in the same WHERE clause.
• Test in your org: Run queries in Developer Console or sf data query and confirm row counts, especially for dynamic literals and week boundaries.

Timezone and date vs datetime gotchas

• Literals already respect your timezone: DateTime values are stored in UTC, but a literal such as TODAY resolves to midnight to midnight in the running user’s timezone (falling back to the org default), and Salesforce converts that window to UTC behind the scenes. CreatedDate = TODAY is already timezone-correct for whoever runs the query.
• The same query can differ by user: because the window follows the running user’s timezone and locale, two users in different timezones can get different rows from the same query, and raw UTC values in API output or exports can look a day off from what the query matched.
• Do not compare a date function with a date literal: WHERE DAY_ONLY(CreatedDate) = TODAY does not compile because SOQL does not allow a date-function result to be compared with a date literal. For the running user’s local calendar day, use WHERE CreatedDate = TODAY. To filter on a specific UTC calendar date, compare DAY_ONLY(CreatedDate) with an explicit date such as 2024-08-27; the date functions guide explains that pattern.

---

✅ Conclusion

Date literals keep SOQL date filters readable and maintenance-free. Fixed literals cover standard reporting periods; dynamic literals with :n cover rolling windows. Use them in WHERE clauses on date fields, validate results in your org, and pair them with the rest of your filter toolkit for precise, time-aware queries.

For further reading, see the official Salesforce date formats and literals documentation.

Salesforce Date Formats and Literals Documentation Official Salesforce reference for supported date formats and literals in SOQL queries.

🔜 Your Next Steps

1. Compare a fixed and a rolling window: Run LAST_MONTH against LAST_N_DAYS:30 on the same field and note how the row counts differ.
2. Prove the today boundary: Confirm for yourself that LAST_N_DAYS:7 includes today while NEXT_N_DAYS:7 does not.
3. Check your fiscal calendar: Run a THIS_FISCAL_QUARTER query and compare it against your org’s fiscal year settings in Setup.

Next, move on to SOQL: A Guide to Date Functions to extract parts of a date, convert time zones, and group records by calendar or fiscal periods.

---

📚 Resources

Salesforce Date Formats and Literals Documentation Official Salesforce reference for supported date formats and literals in SOQL queries.

SOQL for Admins (Trailhead) Hands-on Trailhead module covering practical SOQL query patterns and filtering.