Overview

This article answers common questions about changing or extending your fiscal year-end in Accounting Seed, including how period names work, how to set up a transition year, and how to fix missing Year or Quarter fields on your reports. Changing your fiscal year-end affects historical reporting and Retained Earnings, so plan to test your approach in a sandbox and review it with your accountant before making changes in production.

In this article

• Can I create a 13th accounting period (e.g., 2026-13)?
• What does the period name actually represent?
• How do I change my fiscal year-end (e.g., move from April to December)?
• Can I extend my current year into a single long period (more than 12 months)?
• My Year and Quarter fields are blank, and I can't run yearly or quarterly reports. How do I fix it?

Can I create a 13th accounting period (e.g., 2026-13)?

No. Accounting Seed allows a maximum of 12 periods per fiscal year. Period names follow the YYYY-MM format, where MM must be 01 through 12. This limit is enforced by the system and cannot be bypassed, regardless of the start or end dates you use. A fiscal year longer than 12 periods cannot be represented as a single fiscal year in Accounting Seed.

What does the period name actually represent?

YYYY is the fiscal year label, and MM is the period number within that fiscal year (01 through 12), not the calendar month. For example, in a fiscal year that runs April through March, period 01 is April and period 05 is August, five months later. So for a fiscal year labeled FY2027 (April 2026 through March 2027), period 2027-05 is August 2026. The period name is a label only. The Start Date, End Date, Year field, and Status are what drive accounting and reporting.

How do I change my fiscal year-end (e.g., move from April to December)?

Use a short transition year:

1. 1. Finish and close every period in your current fiscal year by setting each period's Status to Closed, following your normal period-close process.
   2. Manually create the shorter set of periods that bridges to your new year-end, naming them sequentially and setting the Year field to match. The Create Accounting Periods wizard only builds full 12-month years, so create the transition periods individually or import them using the Accounting Periods import template. For example, moving from an April year-end to a December year-end creates an eight-period transition year covering May through December. See this Accounting Periods support article for guidance on avoiding date gaps or overlaps between periods.
   3. Resume normal 12-month years after the transition using the Create Accounting Periods wizard.

Opening balances carry forward automatically at each close.

Can I extend my current year into a single long period (more than 12 months)?

Not as one native fiscal year. The 12-period cap applies regardless of how long the fiscal year needs to span. If you need to keep the calendar aligned across the transition, choose one of these approaches:

• • Re-map period names so the sequence stays clean.
  • Keep 12 or fewer Accounting Periods and use a custom field or formula to sub-divide a period for internal reporting.

My Year and Quarter fields are blank, and I can't run yearly or quarterly reports. How do I fix it?

Prerequisites:

1. 1. Add the Year and Quarter fields to your Accounting Period page layout
   2. Edit the "All" list view and add Year and Quarter fields.
   3. Add the Create Accounting Periods and Refresh Accounting Periods buttons to the Accounting Periods list view.

To set the Quarter and Year on consecutive periods:

1. 1. Click Refresh Accounting Periods on the Accounting Periods list view to auto-populate Year and Quarter for your standard periods.
   2. Once the Quarter and Year are set on all periods in the range you're reporting on, you can filter or group by fiscal period:

• • In the Financial Reports Hub, you can then generate the report, and use the column filters list on the right to filter by Accounting Year, Accounting Quarter, or Accounting Period.
  • On the legacy Financial Reports screen, the Timeframe dropdown (Monthly, Quarterly, or Yearly) becomes available near the top of the report parameters, before you run the report.

For more on creating, closing, and refreshing Accounting Periods, see this Accounting Periods support article.

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