Fiscal versus calendar Years Follow

It is possible to change the financial statements from a calendar year to a fiscal year?

Resolution

You can select any month and year as your Starting Date in the Plan Setup. The software will build a 12-month financial calendar starting with that month. If you start your plan in June, the plan will build a forecast based upon June-to-May fiscal years, because this is the year you are planning and it is a fiscal year, not a calendar year.

The software will automatically display the "FY" (Fiscal Year) in front of the year (as in "FY2019," "FY2020", etc.) whenever your starting month is any month except January. This is because of the standard accounting convention that records fiscal years as the year in which they end, if they begin on any date except January 1.

Starting Dates for existing companies

Ideally, if you are an ongoing business, you will set the Starting Date to match your existing tax accounting fiscal year. However, you may want to start the plan to coincide with the launch of a new product line, or some other major event; this is fine. Just put a note in the financial plan area that the company's fiscal years for tax purposes are September 1 to August 31, but the business plan is from June to May, and so on.

Starting Dates for start-ups

The starting date helps you separate the "start-up period," in which you plan, obtain funding, buy any necessary initial inventory, and interview potential employees, from the "opening of the business," when you have to start paying your employees, and begin receiving sales income.

In general, your starting date comes before (or in the same month) sales begin.

Starting Date changes dates, not data

If you already have financial data in the plan, and you change your Starting Date, you will find that the month and/or year labels at the top of your tables change, but the data within them does not. For example, if you had $300 of sales in your first month (January), and then changed the starting month to June, you will now list $300 of sales in your first month (June).

If you already have data...

If you have completed extensive forecasts, and now want to change the starting date (and the related numbers), click Save As on the File menu and select a new name for your plan. You can then change the Starting Date and rework your forecasts with the new dates in mind, without overwriting the original plan, in case you wish to revisit it later.