PatternCron
Quarterly, on the first morning
Quarterly reports without a calendar lookup: a step in the month field lands on January, April, July and October automatically.
Last updated
In plain English
- Fires 09:00 on 1 Jan, 1 Apr, 1 Jul, 1 Oct
- 4 runs per year
Why it’s written this way
The month field runs 1–12, and a step counts from the range's start — so */3 means months 1, 4, 7 and 10: exactly the calendar quarters. Combined with day-of-month 1 and hour 9, that's 09:00 on the first day of each quarter.
The explicit list 1,4,7,10 says the same thing and is arguably more readable in a crontab someone else maintains — steps earn their keep when the list would be long.
Edge cases to know
- →A step counts from the FIELD's start, not from when you installed the job — */3 can never mean February, May, August, November; spell those as a list (2,5,8,11).
- →Quarterly jobs are rare enough to be forgotten — log each run somewhere a human looks, or the first missed quarter goes unnoticed until year-end.