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Cron schedule

Cron every quarter

The cron expression for every quarter is 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *: 00:00 on January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1. 0 0 1 */3 * expands to the same four months.

Every quarter
Expression0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *
Runs4 times in 2027
systemd OnCalendarquarterly

How it works

Quarters are a month-field job. 1,4,7,10 names the first month of each calendar quarter, and day 1 with 0 0 makes it midnight on the first day. */3 in the month field counts from 1 in steps of 3, which lands on the same months.

systemd has a keyword for it: quarterly normalizes to *-01,04,07,10-01 00:00:00. crontab and Kubernetes have no @quarterly macro, so you write the fields.

A quarter-start run is when the previous quarter has closed, which suits financial summaries, compliance exports and license reviews. The job should report on the quarter that just ended.

Field-by-field breakdown
FieldValueMeaning
Minute0minute 0 (on the hour)
Hour0hour 0 (12 AM)
Day of month1day 1
Month1,4,7,10January, April, July and October
Day of week*every day of the week

Next runs

Scheduler clock

As on GitHub Actions without timezone, Vercel, Cloudflare and Kubernetes with timeZone "Etc/UTC".

Next run times, computed in your browser from the current time
RunYour timeUTC
1Calculating… 
2  
3  
4  
5  

Ready-to-paste versions

The same schedule for each scheduler, with what differs on each one.

crontab (Linux, macOS, BSD)

crontab -e
# m h dom mon dow  command
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * /usr/local/bin/job.sh >> /var/log/job.log 2>&1
  • cron uses the server’s time zone. On cronie (Fedora, RHEL), a CRON_TZ=Europe/London line above the entry changes the zone for the entries below it.

GitHub Actions

.github/workflows/scheduled.yml
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *'
      # timezone: 'America/New_York'  # optional; UTC when omitted
  workflow_dispatch: {}
  • Runs in UTC unless you set timezone, and only on the default branch. GitHub’s docs warn that scheduled runs can be delayed at busy times and that schedules in public repositories are disabled after 60 days without activity.
  • The start of every hour is GitHub’s busiest slot. If the exact minute doesn’t matter, move the 0 to something like 17 to get picked up sooner.
  • With a timezone that observes DST, a time skipped by the spring-forward change advances to the next valid time (the docs’ example: 2:30 AM becomes 3:00 AM).

Kubernetes CronJob

cronjob.yaml
apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata:
  name: scheduled-job
spec:
  schedule: "0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *"
  timeZone: "Etc/UTC"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
            - name: job
              image: busybox:1.36
              command: ["/bin/sh", "-c", "date; echo running"]
  • spec.timeZone is stable since Kubernetes 1.27; without it, the kube-controller-manager’s zone applies. concurrencyPolicy: Forbid skips a run while the previous Job is still active.

Vercel Cron Jobs

vercel.json
{
  "crons": [
    { "path": "/api/cron", "schedule": "0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *" }
  ]
}
  • Vercel always uses UTC, doesn’t accept names like MON or JAN, and won’t let you set both day of month and day of week.
  • This fits the Hobby plan, but Hobby precision is per hour: the invocation can land anywhere within the scheduled hour.

Cloudflare Workers

wrangler.toml
[triggers]
crons = ["0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *"]
  • Cron Triggers run on UTC. Changes can take up to 15 minutes to propagate across Cloudflare’s network.

node-cron (Node.js)

scheduler.js
import cron from 'node-cron';

// 6 fields: the first one (seconds) is optional
cron.schedule('0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *', async () => {
  await runJob();
}, { timezone: 'UTC', noOverlap: true });
  • The schedule lives inside the Node process: if it’s down, nothing runs, and three replicas run the job three times. noOverlap skips a tick while the previous run is still going.

systemd timer

job.timer + job.service
# /etc/systemd/system/job.timer
[Unit]
Description=Run job.service quarterly

[Timer]
OnCalendar=quarterly
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

# /etc/systemd/system/job.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/job.sh

# systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl enable --now job.timer
  • Check it with systemd-analyze calendar 'quarterly', which prints the normalized form and the next elapse. AccuracySec defaults to 1min, so the start can drift by up to a minute.
  • Persistent=true runs the job at boot if the machine was off at the scheduled time, which plain cron doesn’t do.

Spring @Scheduled and Quartz

Java
@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 *", zone = "UTC")
public void runJob() {
    // ...
}

// Quartz CronTrigger:
CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 0 1 1,4,7,10 ?")
  • In Spring, the first of the 6 fields is seconds; the rest follow standard cron (0 or 7 = Sunday).
  • In Quartz, one of the two day fields must be ?, and weekdays run 1 = Sunday to 7 = Saturday, which is why the example uses names.

Pitfalls

Fiscal quarters don’t always start in January

If the fiscal year starts in April, quarters start in April, July, October and January: the same list. If it starts in February, you need 0 0 1 2,5,8,11 *, and */3 can’t express that without a range like 2-12/3.

Quarter end is not quarter start

Running on the last day of March, June, September and December needs the last-day workaround limited to those months: 0 0 28-31 3,6,9,12 * plus a check that tomorrow is the 1st. In Quartz, 0 0 0 L 3,6,9,12 ?.

Four runs a year are easy to lose

A quarterly job that silently fails costs three months. Alert on failure and keep a way to trigger it by hand, like GitHub’s workflow_dispatch or kubectl create job --from=cronjob/….

Frequently asked questions

What is the cron expression for every quarter?
0 0 1 1,4,7,10 * runs at midnight on the first day of January, April, July and October. 0 0 1 */3 * is equivalent.
Is there a @quarterly macro in cron?
Not in crontab(5) or Kubernetes. systemd has OnCalendar=quarterly.
How do I run at the end of each quarter?
Schedule 0 0 28-31 3,6,9,12 * with a check that tomorrow is the 1st, or use L in Quartz, Spring, node-cron or Cloudflare.
How do I test a quarterly cron job?
Run the command manually, and verify the schedule with a next-run calculator such as the table on this page or systemd-analyze calendar quarterly.

Last reviewed by Arielton Oberek.