0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *
Cron reads this as: at 00:00, on day-of-month 1, in month January, April, July and October.
Next 5 runs
These times are in your browser's local time zone. Cron itself uses the server's zone, which on most cloud hosts is UTC. If the difference matters here, see time zones & DST.
- Calculating…
When to use this schedule
This runs at midnight on the first of January, April, July and October, the start of each calendar quarter. Typical uses are quarterly reporting, subscription renewals, periodic audits and compliance jobs.
What to watch out for
Calendar quarters and fiscal quarters are often different. If your financial year starts in February, use 0 0 1 2,5,8,11 * instead. */3 in the month field gives the same calendar quarters but is harder to shift to a fiscal year, so an explicit list is usually the better choice. With only four runs a year, a broken job can stay broken for three months, so test it by hand rather than waiting for the next run.
The crontab line
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * /usr/local/bin/your-job.sh >> /var/log/your-job.log 2>&1Send the output to a log you will read. By default cron mails it, and on a host with no mail transport that mail is silently dropped. See the crontab guide for the surrounding syntax.
Related schedules
| Expression | Schedule |
|---|---|
0 0 1 */3 * | Same quarters, written as a step |
0 0 1 2,5,8,11 * | Fiscal year starting February |
0 0 1 1 * | Once a year |
Build your own
If this page doesn't cover the schedule you need, compose it field by field in the visual builder, or paste an expression you already have into the explainer for a per-field breakdown. The examples library has sixty schedules in one place, and the guides cover crontab syntax, time zones, troubleshooting and production practices.