Shortend fiscal year variant

Shortened Fiscal Year

Definition
Fiscal year that contains less than twelve months.
A shortened fiscal year could be necessary in the following cases, for example:

Establishment of a company

Changeover from a calendar year to a non-calendar fiscal year, or vice versa.

Use
When you define a shortened fiscal year, you have to make the following specifications:

A shortened fiscal year must always be defined as year-dependent, since it can only

apply to a specific year and must be followed by a complete fiscal year.

You define a shortened fiscal year and the following or previous complete fiscal year

in one fiscal year variant.

You define a shortened fiscal year in Customizing for Financial Accounting as
follows: Financial Accounting Global Settings Fiscal Year
Maintain Fiscal Year Variant (Maintain Shortened Fiscal Year)

Integration
The options available for defining a shortened fiscal year depend on whether you are
using Financial Accountingwith or without Asset Accounting.

If you are using Financial Accounting without Asset Accounting, each fiscal year can

start with any period.

If you use Financial Accounting with Asset Accounting, each fiscal year must start

with period 001, so that the depreciation can be calculated correctly.

For more information, see the Asset Accounting documentation under
Shortened Fiscal Years

Maintain Fiscal Year Variant (Maintain Shortened Fisc.

Year)
You can define the following characteristics for a fiscal year variant:

how many posting periods a fiscal year has

how many special periods you need

how the system is to determine the posting periods when posting

When defining your fiscal year, you have the following options:

Your fiscal year is the calendar year

In this case, you must only select the Calendar year field.

Your fiscal year is not the same as the calendar year and is not yeardependent
In this case, you first enter the number of your posting periods in the Number posting per. field. To
define your posting periods, select your fiscal year variant and select Periods on the navigation screen.
On this screen, enter the month and the day of the period end and the period in each case.

Your fiscal year is not the same as the calendar year and is year-dependent
Enter the number of your posting periods in the field Number posting periods and select the
field Year-dependent. To define your posting periods, select your fiscal year variant and
select Periods on the navigation screen. The system asks for which calendar year your year-dependent
fiscal year variant is valid. You then enter the month and day of the period end for each of your periods,
and the periods themselves.
It is also possible to determine names for the periods of a non-year-specific fiscal year variant. To do so,
select your fiscal year variant and choose Period texts on the navigation screen. You can specify a
three-character abbreviation (Jan, Feb, Mar...) and a 20-character long text (January, February, March).

Standard settings
The following fiscal year variants have been created in the standard system:

Variants in which the fiscal year is the same as the calendar and has up to four special periods

Variants for shortened fiscal years. For more information on shortened fiscal years, see "Defining

shortened fiscal years".

Variants for non-calendar fiscal years:
April to March with four special periods
July to June with four special periods
October to September with four special periods
Variants that are set up on a weekly basis. These variants can only be used in the Special
Purpose Ledger application.

Activities
1. Check the standard fiscal year variants.
2. Change the existing variants, if necessary, or create your own variants.
Defining shortened fiscal year
A shortened fiscal year is a fiscal year having less than twelve months, but for which year-end closing
must be carried out. The definition of a shortened fiscal year is always year-dependent, since it
represents a year-related exception. You must always define an entire calendar year when defining a
fiscal year variant. The year-related fiscal year variant therefore contains not only the periods from the
shortened fiscal year, but also other periods from the previous or subsequent fiscal year.
There are two ways to define a shortened fiscal year:

If you use Financial Accounting without Asset Accounting, you can begin a fiscal
year with any period.
Example

If your shortened year goes from January to September, you can assign periods 004 to 012 . Assign
periods 001 to003 of the new fiscal year to the months October-December.
Specify the number of periods for the fiscal year variant (12 in the example above).
Note
Keep in mind that the last period of a fiscal year must correspond to the number of periods in that year.
This means that if you want to define 12 periods, the last period in that year must be number 12.

If you implement the Asset Accounting component, each fiscal year must begin with period
number 001 , to allow asset depreciation calculations to be carried out accurately.
For a fiscal year variant, specify the periods and the number of periods the shortened fiscal year has. This
way, each fiscal year of the variant can begin with period 001.
Example
If you define a fiscal year with twelve periods, it can contain a shortened year with nine periods
(from 001 to 009). The remaining calendar year contains the first three periods of the new fiscal year
(periods 001 to 003).
For more information about implementing the Asset Accounting component, see the Asset Accounting
documentation.

Note
You define your shortened year and the following normal fiscal years under the same fiscal year variant.
Bear in mind that you generally need to ensure that it is possible to post to previous fiscal years.
You need to keep the year-dependent fiscal year variant for as long as you are posting in or prior to a
shortened fiscal year, or if you are transferring old data from this period. You cannot define yearindependent fiscal year variants until the shortened fiscal year has been closed (from the accounting
perspective), with no further adjustment postings expected.
Year-dependent definitions will be deleted as soon as you convert the fiscal year variants from yeardependent to year-independent.

Standard settings
Two shortened fiscal year variants are provided with the standard system: variant R1 for a Financial
Accounting shortened year, and variant AM for shortened years when Asset Accounting is in use.

Activities
1. If you need to define a shortened fiscal year, first determine which of the two options above will be
used.
2. Define the shortened fiscal year.
To define the shortened year for Asset Accounting, select Navigation -> Shortened fisc.yr.