Custom fiscal years in salesforce are the ability to change the standard fiscal years and change the whole structure of the calendar year.
In practice this is used for changing the typical year into trimesters or changing certain quarters to have more weeks than other quarters based.
Other business structures could include a fifth quarter to house all of their venture capital or expenditures to loop around certain tax implications.
Youtube Video
One quick note before we move on to the blog post.
We have a youtube video on how to do it on the salesforce emily youtube channel!
Sometimes it is easier to watch someone do a task rather than to try and follow along.
Step by Step.
The first thing in order to setup custom fiscal years is to go to the setup of salesforce.
To get there go to the top right corner of salesforce click on the gear icon.
Then click setup.
From setup in the quick find type fiscal year.
Click on the ‘fiscal year’ setting.
This will bring up a choice of standard fistcal year or custom fiscal year.
Double check with the standard fiscal year settings that these will not work.
Once you change you change to custom fiscal years you cannot go back.
Select the ‘custom fiscal year’ radio button.
Validate you understand the implications of the custom fiscal year change and enable!
Then click the new button.
You will get a popup that has common year structure templates for you to choose from.
If this works then choose it! If not then click out and go to advanced settings.
You will need to enter in some metadata before you save.
Then you have created your very own custom fiscal year!
One more thing. If you need advanced customization you can do this on the same page as the meta data.
Conclusion
A big congrats to you for making it through this tutorial! We hope you found it useful!
Check out the salesforce Emily youtube channel here.
You can read more about us here
And check out our courses here