Admin Setup - Fiscal Years

Overview

This screen can be used to create and maintain the set of fiscal years and periods (including custom weeks, months and quarters) that will be available in your system.   By allowing you to specify your own dates, each Unanet installation can be customized to your own corporate calendar as well as facilitate changes in fiscal period definitions.  The validations on this screen will enforce that there are no overlapping definitions as well as prevent any gaps between fiscal year definitions.

These fiscal periods will be available for use when creating Plans and Assignments, will be available as additional reporting period options on many standard reports, and also available when performing accounting activities such as posting or creating invoices.   

 

Unanet Financials

When running with a Unanet Financials license, Fiscal Years must be established before any transactions can be generated.  Be sure to configure fiscal years for as far back in time as you have plans to load any historical data.

 

Fiscal Years for Project Costing

While the concept of Fiscal Years is available on many standard reports, it is particularly applicable to the Project Accounting reports associated with Project Costing.  These definitions are used in conjunction with the management of Indirect Cost Rates (Target, Provisional and Actual) and are also used on various Project Accounting Reports when determining past, present and future fiscal periods.   Once data has been posted to a fiscal period, you can no longer remove it (or make changes to any prior periods for that fiscal year).

 

Advanced Support for Fiscal Calendar Periods

Using the Allow Creation of and Show Fiscal Calendar Options  (unanet.fiscal_calendar.enabled) property, additional functionality can be enabled on this screen to allow for the creation of custom quarters, months and weeks.  This may be useful if your installation has a special accounting calendar such as 4-4-5, 4-5-4, etc.   

Note that configuring advanced fiscal periods is in no way related to time period definitions and will not impact the recording of time.

 
Roles

This screen is available to users having the Administrator or GL Admin role.

License

This screen is available with the Project Tracking and Project Portfolio family of Unanet licenses.

 

 

Topics covered on this help page include:

 

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Example Fiscal Years maintenance screen (with the Allow Creation of and Show Fiscal Calendar Options  (unanet.fiscal_calendar.enabled) property disabled):

Using this screen, you can create, modify and remove fiscal year periods.  Note that removing a fiscal year period will result in the removal of any associated Indirect Cost Rates.  

Field Descriptions (click on a link below for additional information):

 

 


Example Fiscal Year maintenance screen (with the Allow Creation of and Show Fiscal Calendar Options  (unanet.fiscal_calendar.enabled) property enabled):

Using this screen, you can create the fiscal year definitions that will be available for use with the Project Accounting functionality as well as create the additional fiscal quarters, months and week definitions that will be available for Assignments / Plans and in reporting.  This screen will enforce that no gaps exist when defining fiscal periods.  

Note that if you create Plans and Assignments using particular fiscal periods and subsequently alter your fiscal period definitions, the existing plans and assignments will continue to reflect the original dates for which they were planned.

Field Descriptions (click on a link below for additional information):

 

 

Fiscal Breakdown

When adding a new Fiscal Year, you will initially be prompted to provide a Name (e.g. FY2010) and supply a Begin Date.  You will also need to identify a  Fiscal Year Type.  This Type selection will provide you with a starting point which you can then further customize on the subsequent Fiscal Year Breakdown screen.

If you have other existing fiscal years already defined, the system will default the Begin Date to the day after the latest Fiscal Year End Date as to ensure no gaps.

The available Fiscal Year Types include a Gregorian Calendar option (which represents a basic 12 month year - beginning on the first day of any month and ending 12 months later) as well as a number of other accounting calendar types (e.g. 4-4-5, 4-5-4, etc).  Keep in mind that what you select in this screen will provide you with a preliminary layout of weeks, months and quarters which you will have the option of further customizing before this fiscal year definition is complete.

 

After making your initial choice on the Fiscal Year Type screen, or when editing an existing fiscal year breakdown definition, you will be presented with a screen resembling the screen below.

On this screen, you can further customize the fiscal year periods by changing the number of days in a week, inserting additional periods using the icon, or removing entries by clicking on the icon.  This functionality can be used to create fiscal periods that align with your business needs and as such, you may need the ability to create 13 months or have more or less than 7 days in a week, etc.  To support the concept of bi-weekly fiscal periods, you may consider configuring weeks having 14 days.

 

Clicking on the Reset button will set the breakdown back to the original system provided definition (only visible once you've modified a Fiscal Year definition).

 

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