A fiscal year is one business unit’s accounting calendar for the year, made up of twelve consecutive monthly fiscal periods. Every batch, payment, and invoice uses the fiscal period that matches its date, so generate each business unit’s calendar before staff need to work with those dates.
Prerequisites
- You need the fiscal years permission in Setup.
- The business unit should already exist, with its fiscal-year start month set if you are generating its first year.
Where to Find It
Go to Finance & Billing › Setup › Fiscal Years to view fiscal years for the business unit you are working in. To view another unit’s years, switch business units. From this list, you can rename a year or generate the next one, but you cannot create a year by manually choosing its dates.
Generating a Fiscal Year
Select Generate Next Fiscal Year to add a year to the business unit’s calendar. Rhythm builds the new year based on whether the business unit already has a fiscal year.
| Situation | What is generated |
|---|---|
| The business unit already has at least one fiscal year | A new year that starts the day after the latest year ends, includes twelve monthly periods, and is named for the calendar year or years it spans |
| The business unit has no fiscal year yet | A year that starts in the business unit’s fiscal-year start month, includes today, and has twelve monthly periods |
Fiscal periods are numbered from the business unit’s fiscal-year start month, not from January. If a business unit’s fiscal year starts in July, July is Fiscal Period 1, August is Fiscal Period 2, September is Fiscal Period 3, and the numbering continues from there. When you see a month label next to a fiscal year elsewhere in Finance & Billing, such as in snapshot-style reporting, the label identifies that specific month within the fiscal year. It does not necessarily identify the fiscal year’s end month. Generating a new fiscal year does not close the current one because the years are independent, so you can add next year’s calendar whenever it is convenient without affecting anything currently open.
Warning
When you generate a business unit’s first fiscal year, or generate a year far in the past, any periods that have already ended are created with the status closed. Those periods did not go through an actual month-end close, so nothing recognized deferred revenue or booked costs for them. They are simply marked closed when they are created. Because periods close in order, the business unit’s first eligible close can be later than you expect. If a business unit’s early months look closed with figures you did not expect, this is why.
Rhythm will not generate a year that would start more than about five years from today.
Renaming a Fiscal Year
Open a year from the list to change its Name. The edit page only lets you change the name and custom field values for an existing fiscal year. Each period keeps the name it had when the year was generated, even after you rename the year itself.
| What you can change on an existing year | What you cannot change |
|---|---|
| Name, custom field values | Start date, end date, business unit, the year’s own status, notes |
| Removing an open period that holds no batches | Removing or altering a closed period |
| — | Any period’s status, because only closing or reopening changes a period’s status |
You cannot change the Fiscal Year ID from the Console, even for an existing year whose Name you can edit. It stays fixed for the life of the record, just as a period’s identity stays fixed no matter what it is named.
Some accounts have also been able to edit an individual fiscal period’s own Name directly, separately from renaming the year that contains it. Where that is possible, the period’s underlying identifier does not change. Reporting, processing logic, and financial associations continue to use that fixed identifier rather than the label, so relabeling a period this way is cosmetic in the same way renaming a year is.
Dependencies and Precedence
- A fiscal year must be exactly twelve consecutive calendar months belonging to its business unit, with no gap or overlap with the business unit’s other years. Rhythm checks this every time you save, so a problem elsewhere in the business unit’s calendar can block a rename that would otherwise be valid.
- An open period that holds a batch cannot be removed from a year. Move or remove the batches from that period first.
- Existing batches make a later fiscal-year-start change far more complex. A business unit’s fiscal-year start is meant to be set when you generate its first year. Once batches exist, they are tagged with specific period numbers, so changing the start month afterward is not a simple edit. Contact Support if you need to change an existing business unit’s fiscal-year start after transactions are already recorded.
- Payment activity is reported in the business unit's own fiscal year, not the invoice's or the underlying event's. A payment counts toward the fiscal year that matches the business unit’s fiscal-year start setting for the books where the payment posted. If that setting is not what you expected, accounting and reporting output can place a payment in a different fiscal year than you assumed.
- A date with no covering fiscal year still needs a period. If a batch, payment, or other transaction is dated outside every fiscal year the business unit currently has, Rhythm automatically generates a year to cover it. It follows the same rules as generating a first year, including creating any already-ended periods in that new year as closed. This is why a fiscal year can appear on the list even when no one selected Generate Next Fiscal Year.
- Deleting a business unit deletes its fiscal years with it. You do not need to remove the business unit’s calendar separately.
Change Impact and How to Revert
Renaming a year changes only its displayed name. It does not change any dates, periods, or posted transactions, and it does not affect reporting or integrations. Those continue to use the year’s fixed identifier. Query views such as Financial Query’s batch listings show the new name for display, but integrations, batch processing, and historical financial data continue to reference the unchanging identifier instead of the label you see. There is no undo after you save a rename, so reopen the year and change the name back if needed.
Fiscal periods change status only when you close the current period or reopen one, never from an edit on this page. See the related tasks below for closing and reopening a period.
Permissions
Viewing, renaming, and generating fiscal years all need the same fiscal years permission in Setup.
Validation and Errors
| Message contains | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| A message about generating years more than five years in the future | The business unit’s calendar already runs about five years ahead | Wait until the calendar catches up before generating further ahead |
| "…should start one day after previous year…" or "…should end one day before next year…" | The business unit’s calendar already has a gap or overlap somewhere | Review the business unit’s other fiscal years for a misaligned year before retrying the save |
| "…exist that are in this period." | You tried to remove a period that still holds batches | Move or remove those batches first, or leave the period in place |
| A fiscal period is reported as not exactly one month | A year was submitted with periods that do not each span one calendar month | Regenerate the year instead of editing periods by hand |