How to set up a new fiscal or calendar year

Overview

Catalyst supports both traditional calendar years and custom fiscal calendars aligned with your accounting practices. While calendar years require minimal setup, fiscal calendars are more complex because they use custom monthly configurations. Proper setup ensures Catalyst can correctly map and load your financial data.

What's the difference?

• Calendar years are easier for tax reporting because they fall in line with the IRS's own systems. While fiscal years can be used, they require more complex auditing and accounting. A fiscal year keeps income and expenses together on the same tax return, while a calendar year splits them into two.
• Fiscal year uses a different monthly configuration than the calendar year and lets seasonal businesses choose the start and end dates that better align with their revenue and expenses. This means a fiscal year can help present a more accurate picture of a company's financial performance.

Example: 4-4-5 Fiscal Calendar
4–4–5 accounting is a method of managing accounting periods. Accounting cycles, or calendars, define the number of weeks in each financial period in each financial quarter. The 4-4-5 accounting calendar divides a year into four quarters of 13 weeks, each grouped into two 4-week "months" and one 5-week "month".

Example: 4-5-4 Fiscal Calendar
A 4-5-4, calendar is a guide for retailers that ensures sales comparability between years by dividing the year into months based on a 4 weeks – 5 weeks – 4 weeks format. The layout of the calendar lines up holidays and ensures the same number of Saturdays and Sundays in comparable months.

How to set up a new fiscal year

Important: You cannot edit the fiscal calendar of a fiscal year that already has data associated with it in an existing scenario.

1. Before you can create a new actuals scenario, you first must set up your fiscal year in Catalyst. If you don't use a fiscal calendar, then you can skip to the next section.
    
2. Navigate to Administration > System Configuration > Calendar.
   
   
    
3. Review and edit your Period Names and Abbreviations.
   
   
    
4. Create and edit your Period Dates. These set the first day of the fiscal month for each period.
   
   
    
5. There's nothing stopping you from creating future years as well, if you know what they'll be.
6. Once the period dates are created, you'll then need to create a new Actuals Scenario in Catalyst to correspond with the fiscal year you just created (see How to Create a New Calendar Year below for instructions). 

How to set up a new calendar year

Important: You cannot edit the fiscal calendar of a fiscal year that already has data associated with it in an existing scenario.

1. Setting up a new calendar year is very simple and requires zero configuration.
2. All that's needed is to create a new Actuals scenario for the upcoming year.
3. Navigate to Administration > Scenario >
   
   
    
4. Click Add Scenario.
   
   
    
5. Mimic the settings below but swap in the desired year (e.g. 2024, 2025, etc.). 
   
   
    
6. You're done! The system will take care of the rest. 

Setting up future fiscal years in Catalyst is essential. For any client using a fiscal calendar, you must define the new fiscal year dates and create a matching Actuals Scenario before data for that year is processed. Completing these steps in advance ensures your integrations continue to run smoothly, prevents failed loads, and keeps reporting accurate across all scenarios.