The Invercargill City Council's calendar for 2016 repeats some months and skips others.

May and June appear twice at the expense of July and August in some copies of a new Invercargill City Council calendar.

Copies of the calendar, which is delivered to 25,000 Invercargill and Bluff ratepayers and printed by Craigs Design and Print Ltd, also display the Windsor bus route instead of the dates for December.

Council communications manager Eirwen Harris said the mistake was "disappointing".

ROBYN EDIE/FAIRFAX NZ Some copies of the Invercargill City Council's 2016 calendar display a bus route in place of the dates for December.

The first calendars were delivered on Friday and the council was not yet sure how many of the calendars had been misprinted this year, but they had already been notified of four with errors.

Harris did not have a final figure on how much the calendars had cost this year, but in the past they had worked out to be between $1.12 and $1.16 each, including delivery, she said.

People could have their calendars replaced if there were errors, she said.

"It's disappointing and if there's something wrong we will come and pick it up and replace it."

The mistake was a technical fault and not an error on the council's part, Harris said.

Despite the council providing a "perfect" copy to the printers, errors were sometimes printed, Harris said.

"People generally ring in and we take the imperfect one out," she said.

"Because it's all automated, sometimes when the technology is making them there's the occasional one that's wrong. But there's only a few every year."

Last year there were only about six copies that contained errors and were replaced, she said.

"There's about 30,000 [calendars in total] each year. We deliver 25,000, and they're all being delivered to each household. There's information about bus timetables because not each person has access to a cell phone or a computer."

Sealed calendars could not be checked and residents were the first to know if something was wrong with the calendars, Harris said.

"We don't know until people tell us, and they're all sealed anyway. So we're just really trusting the printer."

Craigs Design and Print Ltd production manager Brent Hollingworth said the misprint was not the council's fault.

"That happens sometimes. Obviously it's a human error and that's what happens. It's unfortunate and we already had a talk about it," he said.

"We think a very, very small percentage are wrong. It could be a handful like 50. We're not going to pick it up until a consumer sees it."

Incorrect calendars would be replaced, Hollingworth said.

Hollingworth said Craigs had printed the council calendars for several years.