The fiscal year and its customization

A fiscal year or financial year is a period used for calculating annual (yearly) financial statements in businesses and other organizations. The system administrator can set the fiscal year for your organization. The fiscal year settings are used to report on the fiscal year timeline.

Salesforce supports two types of fiscal years:

• Standard fiscal year
• Custom fiscal year

Standard fiscal year

Salesforce provides the Gregorian calendar as the standard fiscal year calendar by default. But this is not the same for every organization as some organizations use different calendars and need to change the fiscal year start month. For example, our typical business year starts from 1^st April and ends on the 31^st March of the next year, which follows the standard fiscal year. Standard fiscal years can start on the first day of any month. Additionally, they can be defined whether the fiscal year is based on the start or the end of the selected month.

To set up the standard fiscal year for your organization, take the following steps:

1. Click on the Setup (gear icon) | Setup | SETTINGS | Company Settings | Fiscal Year.
2. Select the Standard Fiscal Year option.
3. Select the start month for the fiscal year.
4. Choose whether the fiscal year is defined based on the start or end of the month:
   
5. You could also select Apply to All Forecasts and Quotas if you want to apply the new fiscal year settings to your existing forecasts and quotas. This option may or may not be available depending on your forecast settings.
6. Click Save.

Custom fiscal year

The custom fiscal year is used when the standard fiscal year does not meet the organization's requirements. To use the custom fiscal year, the system administrator has to enable it. A complex fiscal year structure can be achieved using the custom fiscal year option. Enabling custom fiscal years does not automatically define them. You must define all of your company's custom fiscal years so that they fit your company's calendar.

To set up the custom fiscal year for your organization, take the following steps:

1. Click Setup (gear icon) | Setup | SETTINGS | Company Settings | Fiscal Year.
2. Select the Custom Fiscal Year option.
3. Select the checkbox, next to the statement Yes, I understand the implications the custom fiscal year feature has on my organization and I want to enable it.
4. Click Enable Custom Fiscal Years.
5. Click OK.

Note

Enabling custom fiscal years is not reversible. After enabling custom fiscal years, you cannot revert to standard fiscal years.