AX 2012 – Change fiscal calendar to a shifted year
Sometimes companies are in the need to change the fiscal book year to another start and end date. It is possible to change a fiscal calendar for legal entities in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. This post is a walkthrough to guide you through the steps to achieve the desired result.
Let’s directly start with an example of the requirement to change the fiscal year. Suppose the fiscal calendar runs from January to December and this needs to be changed. The new calendar will run from April to March. You might have already posted transactions in your environment for several years. Also, you could have some other companies which also need to get a new pattern. Due to different regulations per country, it might become a bit more complex. Some companies then would need to have the current fiscal year extended to 15 months. Other companies must have the current year to be 12 months and the next year 15 months. Also, others might be in the need of an additional fiscal year of three months. Whatever the regulation is, the best thing to do is per different shift you need to create a new fiscal calendar.
Walkthrough
As example the USMF demonstration company will be used. This company has now transactions in the fiscal year 2015 and also new fiscal years for 2016 and 2017 are already created. Use the navigation path General ledger > Setup > Fiscal calendars.
Perform the next steps:
- You can click the button New fiscal calendar to create a new shared calendar with the old years, a shifted year, and new book years starting each year in April.
- Fill the fields on the drop-down dialog with the values for the first year with the original start and end dates for the fiscal year and click Create.
You now have created a new calendar with the first fiscal year. You need to add more years to this calendar.
- Click the button New fiscal year.
- Check the fields. You can also select the field Copy from last fiscal year to have an identical copy of the year 2010. Then click Create.
- Repeat the procedure of creating new fiscal years until you come across the first year which will be different.
- Untick the field Copy from last fiscal year if this was enabled and change the field End of fiscal year to indicate the new end date.
Note that this will result in some periods at the end of the year with the same Month and Quarter values. Eventually, you can change this.
- You can now create more fiscal years starting from April 1 and ending on March 31.
When the fiscal calendar is complete, you have not changed the current settings for the legal entity yet. To do so continue the steps:
- Click General ledger > Setup > Ledger.
- In the Fiscal calendar field, you can select the newly created calendar.
When you save this record, you will get a warning stating you should recalculate ledger periods. This process will replace references to the ledger calendar per accounting entry. Note that when you have a large number of accounting entries for this legal entity, the job might take some time.
- On the Ledger form, you can click the button Recalculate ledger periods.
- Optional: You can enable the Batch processing to have the process run on the batch server. This is recommended for performance reasons. Using the button Recurrence you can choose a start date and time.
- Click OK to start the process directly or create the batch task.
When you start the process on the client you will receive a warning. When you have new or changed closing periods you might need to review the entries.
When the process is executed, the steps are complete. Further steps like recalculate balances is not required.
Technical background recalculate ledger periods
The Recalculate ledger balances process will update the contents of the fields FiscalCalendarPeriod and FiscalCalendarYear in the table GeneralJournalEntry for the records belonging to the current Ledger. Based on the accounting date and old values, new references for the new fiscal calendar will be updated.
I do hope you liked this post and will add value for you in your daily work as a professional. If you have related questions or feedback, don’t hesitate to use the Comment feature below.
That’s all for now. Till next time!
Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay
Thanks Andre for the good post.
Could you please bit explain about the below statement
“The Recalculate ledger balances process will update the contents of the fields FiscalCalendarPeriod and FiscalCalendarYear in the table GeneralJournalEntry for the records belonging to the current Ledger. Based on the accounting date and old values, new references for the new fiscal calendar will be updated. ”
What do you mean by new references for the new fiscal calendar will update , please explain with small example .
Thanks in advance.
Hi Lally,
Thanks for your comment and reading my blog post. Each GeneralJournalEntry record has a reference (record-id) to the fiscal calendar period. The records for a period from several fiscal calendars are different. E.g. December 2015 for fiscal period YearJanDec can have record ID 5622456745. The same month for calendar YearJulJun can have record ID 5622456892. So to be able to represent the correct fiscal period, this job will replace the references for the record IDs from one fiscal period to the period of the new fiscal calendar. It is a reference which is technically.
HI ANDRÉ,
Thank for this excellent post.
Could you please guide , what changes required for Fixed Asset Calendar.
Thanks
Dhananjay
Hi Dhananjay,
Thanks for reading my blog. This post was related the ledger fiscal calendar. Can you post your question related to asset calendars on the Dynamics community forum? The link is in the bottom of the blog post.
kind regards,
André
Thanks André
BR
Dhananjay
Hi Andre,
Could this technique be used for a legal entity where the user has mistakenly closed all periods and now needs to post adjustments? So they create a new fiscal calendar, then fiscal year. Then link the new fiscal calendar in General ledger > Setup > Ledger and then recalculate ledger periods?
Hi Jeremy,
This is not the procedure to re-open periods. Once periods are closed, you cannot change them from within the application. It would be possible to update the status field of the periods in SQL directly. Note that this should probably be documented and approved for auditing purposes. But be careful and test this in a separate environment/database first.
Hi ANDRE,
Can I Create Under Fiscal calendar Previous Fiscal Year ?
Example : Fiscal Calendar Name : Fiscal
Fiscal Year :2010
Fiscal Year 2011
Fiscal Year 2012
Now I Want Create Fiscal year 2009 and transaction is already done in 2010.
Fiscal Calendar is linked with Fixed Assets.
Hi Shardendu,
You can try to remove all fiscal years; then insert starting from the year 2009. Test it carefully in a separate environment first.
Hi Andre,
Thanks for Support but System does not allow because transactions is already posted of respective fiscal year…
Hi Andre
I have created a new financial year for FY2018 and follow the prompt and the name of the Financial Year created is “2018” however, the other years’ names are 1/7/20xx and therefor my format of the name of the year is not consistent. Is there any way I can edit and rename the financial year?
Hi Jenny,
First of all, thanks for reading my blog. Functionally, you can only change the name by deleting the years and re-create them.
Hi Andre,
We are currently in a Fiscal Year of Feb 2017 to Jan 30 2018. Our company wants to go to a calendar year for 2018. What would be the best approach?
Do we short Fiscal 2017 a month and end it in Dec 31 2017? and start 2018 on Jan 1? What would be the impact to 2017?
Thank you,
Aggie
Hi Aggie,
You have to check with your accountant what would be allowed according to your country. When allowed, you can indeed shorten the fiscal year with one month. If you don’t have transactions in January 2018, there will be no impact. Before doing the change, test it in a separate environment.
Andre,
Thank you for the step-by-step instructions. I can see that GeneralLedgerEntry now points to my new calendar. What is the process for making Management Reporter recognize the new calendar?
Thank you,
Brent
Hi Brent,
Thanks for reading the blog. Usually changes are synchronized automatically (every 45-60 seconds). I haven’t tested changing a calendar in combination with Management reporter. If changes aren’t recognized, you can check if the synchronization is running and not raise any errors. If not, you could configure a new data-mart database in the end.
kind regards,
André
Thank you for blog. Do you have any references for this process in AX 2009. My company wants to change from a 31 March FY to a 31 Dec FY.
Hi Andre
Thank you for this detailed explanation. You mentioned in the post that when the Financial Calendar Year is extended some month and Quarter will show the same value towards the end of the new financial calendar but this can be changed. Please how and where can I do the change to ensure Month 13,14 and 15 correctly displayed under the Month Column instead of having 12 all through. Also for the quarter, will the last six month show quarter 4 or sometime can be down to reflect the extended quarter in a way
Hi Fausat,
You can edit the periods manually on the form Fiscal Calendars.
How do we change the calendar on Value model on a fixed asset which has transactions already posted. When I try to change error message ‘Cannot change the calendar, transaction already exists’.
Hi Geetha,
As the error is stating, it is not possible to change the calendar once transactions were created. When required, you can change the number of periods for depreciation.
Hi Andre,
Please suggest me if I created Fiscal year (Jan-Dec) 2016, 2017,2018 respectively under fiscal year Calendar and fiscal year is closed 2016 and 2017 . Now i want to check before closed 2018 merged 2017 and 2018 Trial balance or Dimension statement reports for balance checking purpose .
Can we do that ?
Please confirm ,
Step -1 if i create new Fiscal calendar and create fiscal year 2017 and 2018 .
Step 2- Assign General Ledger — Setup – Ledger and assign new fiscal Calendar .
Step 3 – Run Recalculate Ledger periods
Can we do without any functionality effect ?
Hi Shardendu,
To be honest, I cannot understand what you are asking here. Can you submit a question on the Dynamics community with some additional information/examples?
Hello!
I have current fiscal year starting 1.1.2019 and ending 30.4.2019. The year end closing has been run for the date 30.4.2019. Now there is a need to extend the financial year to 1.1.2019-31.12.2019. When I try to attach the new fiscal calendar to Ledger I will get the following error message: “An opening fiscal period does not exist for the opening transaction with date 1.5.2019 in fiscal calendar ” new”. Choose the fiscal calendar that has opening date 1.5.2019.” Is there any way to reverse opening transactions 1.5.2019 to be able to set up new fiscal calendar? I know I can create new fiscal calendar starting 1.5.2019-31.12.2019, but I would prefer the whole year now if it is possible.
Hi Liisa,
What exact version of Dynamics are you running? Depending on your version, you can rerun the year end closing to delete the year end transactions which are now blocking your action to change the fiscal calendar.
Could you please advice if I created Fiscal year (Jan-Dec) 2017, 2018,2019 respectively under fiscal year Calendar and fiscal year is closed 2017 and 2018. Then i would like to check the Fiscal year to (Apr to Mar), so that my next year-end date will to 31 March 2019. If I follow the steps from your blog, after the recalculate the ledger period, will there be any impact to Year 2017 and 2018?
Hi Tommy,
If the fiscal periods for 2017 and 2018 are not changed, there will be no impact for these closed years. For sure, it is recommended to test the changes in fiscal periods in a separate environment first. Then you are able to run several reports to check if indeed the closed years did not change.
Hi Andre,
Thank you for this guide
I’m looking into this for D365. Would we need to consider any other financial impacts, such as budgets and fixed assets that might be impacted by changing the fiscal year?
Hi Josh,
Fixed assets follow their own depreciation schedule. You might need to review budgets in case you have yearly budgets which should be now shifted to another start date.
Understood, thank you Andre
Thank you for your step by step instructions. Currently, I have a fiscal calendar where the year 2022 has a 13th operating period which was created on accident. It can’t be deleted because a transaction that was reversed, was ran through it. Now when they amortize for 2022 it’s amortizing across 13 periods instead of 12, which is incorrect. I’m using your steps to create a new fiscal calendar. For the year 2022 on the new calendar, I set it up with 12 operating periods as it should be and follow the rest of the steps in your process. Once I hit recalculate, should this solve my problem? Thanks in advance!
Hi Natasha,
Your understanding is correct. You can also use this procedure for correcting wrong periods in a fiscal year. Make sure you test the outcome thoroughly in a non-production environment first.
Hi Andre,
Thanks for this guide which was very helpful.
We have the same issue. We are supposed to have an interim 3-month FY due to a planned change in FY. Our finance mistakenly created a 12 month period for fiscal year 2024. Deletion is no longer possible due to posted transactions.
I’ve tried your procedure in our test environment and it worked without any issues. How will this affect the budget cycles created in the old calendar?
Thanks!
Hi Paul,
While writing this blog, I didn’t consider budget cycles. You can try adjusting the budget cycles if the periods are not associated already with the budget models.
Hi Andre,
Thank you for this valuable post.
Our company has been acquired and October period will be the last period for entering transactions into Dynamics AX before transitioning to a different ERP with the parent company.
Our company operates on a Calendar cycle, where the period starts and ends based on the calendar dates, e.g. Financial year 2022 was from 1st July 2022 to 30th June 2023. FinYear 2023 is currently setup from 1st July 2023 to 30th June 2024, October period start date is currently set as 1st Oct 2023 and end date is 31st Oct 2023. The parent company’s financial years runs from January to December with period end based on 5:4:4; their October period start date is 30th Oct 2023 and end date is 3rd Nov 2023.
My question is simply how can i amend or adjust our October period end date to 3rd Nov 2023?
Thanks!
Hi Trevor,
When you create a new fiscal calendar, you can set the start and end dates like it should be amended to e.g. November 3. Then follow the instructions in the blog for swapping the fiscal calendar from the old periods to the new one.
Hi Andre,
Thank you for this very helpful post!
Could you please help clarify the need to create the prior years in the ‘new’ calendar? What is the reason to do this?
Our company is changing our fiscal year from February-January to a traditional calendar of January-December so we are trying to do all the research and testing we can. We have prior history dating back to 2/1/13.
Thank you,
Shauna
Hi Shauna,
When you change the fiscal year on the Ledger form, the balances need to be recalculated based on the new calendar. All transactions will then get a new reference to the new period records. Without the recalculation, the balances will be no longer visible according to the new calendar.
Understood, thank you very much!
Hello André,
We will onboard on may a new company, so we need to create for this year a specific calendar : from july 2023 to may 2024 (step 1), then another one from July 2024 to December 2024. Then this company will join the standard period (jan-dec).
How can do to restrict this calendar to only one company ?
Thank you
Hi Yamin,
The fiscal calendar will be linked on the Ledger form. You would need to pay attention which calendar will be linked on what Ledger. There is no validation in the standard application that a calendar can be selected for only one legal entity.
Hi André Arnaud,
thank you for you answer.
Yamin
Hi Andre,
After creating my new calendar, I am unable to run the recalculation. I get an error about old periods:
“A financial period does not exist for date 12/31/2021 in financial calendar JanMar24. You must create a financial period before you can recalculate ledger periods.”
Would you know what this might be caused by? No matter what start date I input for my new calendar, it seems to always try and reference the previous year.
Thank you
Hi Josh,
When you switch to a new calendar, ensure this new calendar also has periods defined for all the historical fiscal years.
Hi Andre,
Thank you very much for your sharing, its really helpful.
Can we maintain multiple financial calendars for one entity in order to meet different reporting requirements?
For example,
Tax reporting: Feb 23-Jan 24 (12 months)
Statutory reporting: Feb 23-Mar 24 (14 months)
Current setting of financial calendar: 1 Apr – 31 Mar
Following your guidelines, I created a new ledger calendars: Feb 23- Jan 24 to meet the tax reporting requirement, after changed the financial calendar and recalculated the ledger period, how can I switch back to the original one? I need to change the calendar back and recalculate again? or I can maintain more than one financial calendar?
Thank you!
Hi Sam,
The fiscal calendar is used for the accounting years with periods. You should not use that for tax reporting. In the Tax module, there is another calendar that can be used for Tax reporting. The feature to use the recalculations is not intended to continuously change the calendars back and forth.
Can you explain why the statutory reporting has another period length? What exact reports do you need for this statutory reporting?