Skip to main content
Documentation
Documentation
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2023-06-23
Set Up Fiscal Schedules and Years

Set Up Fiscal Schedules and Years

Build and maintain the fiscal schedules and fiscal years that your businesses use and can share for financial accounting and reporting purposes. Fiscal schedules don't contain specific years. To create fiscal years and their periods, use fiscal schedules as the building blocks.
If required, you can add the fiscal schedule as an alternate fiscal schedule on the
Edit Company Accounting Details
 task.
  1. Access the
    Create Fiscal Schedule
     task.
    Define the fiscal schedule.
  2. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Fiscal Schedule Name
    You only need 1 fiscal schedule to share across all your businesses. If you need more than 1, include a distinguishing characteristic in each name for easy identification. You can update this name anytime.
    Auto Populate Fiscal Periods
    Select to automatically populate the fiscal period end date for each posting interval when you create fiscal years for this fiscal schedule. Workday bases dates on the prior fiscal year and adjusts accordingly. Clear to enter the dates manually.
  3. Access the
    Maintain Fiscal Schedule Posting Intervals
     task.
    Define the posting intervals to apply to any fiscal year that you create for the fiscal schedule. During reporting, you can include or exclude adjusting accounting journals in the financial results. You can decide to no longer include a separate period in your schedule in which to post adjustments, even if you’ve historically done so.
  4. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Posting Interval
    Add a row for each interval that you want to use as a period within a fiscal year.
    Example: If you post every month, define 1 interval for each month.
    After you create the initial fiscal year, the posting intervals are in use and you can't add, delete, or change the order of them. You can only rename.
  5. Access the
    Create Fiscal Summary Schedule
     task.
    Define summary intervals that roll up posting intervals into a broader reporting period for a fiscal schedule, such as a quarter or a half year.
  6. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Fiscal Summary Interval
    Add a row for each group of
    Fiscal Posting Intervals
     that you want to combine into a summary reporting period for the fiscal year.
    Example: Group January, February, and March into Q1 to gain insight into your quarter-to-date financial status.
    You can add, change, or delete summary intervals anytime.
  7. Access the
    Create Initial Fiscal Year
     task.
    Create the initial fiscal year for which to perform accounting and financial reporting.
  8. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Fiscal Schedule
    Displays only the fiscal schedules with posting intervals, but no fiscal years are available.
    Fiscal Year Number
    Assign a unique number to identify the year within the fiscal schedule. Example: Enter the calendar year number associated with the first fiscal period.
    Fiscal Year Name
    Uniquely identify the fiscal year in relation to other years within the same fiscal schedule.
    Example: If your fiscal year runs from July through June, you mention both calendar years that it crosses.
    Fiscal Year Start Date
    The first day of the first period within the fiscal year.
    Fiscal Posting Interval
    The periods that make up the fiscal year, as set on the
    Maintain Fiscal Schedule Posting Intervals
     task.
    Fiscal Period End Date
    Select the last day of each period. Workday sets the
    Fiscal Year End Date
     to the latest end date.
  9. (Optional) Access the
    Create Previous Fiscal Year
    .
  10. (Optional) Access the
    Create Next Fiscal Year
    .
    Create previous and next fiscal years as needed. Before you create a ledger year and periods for a fiscal year, you can use the
    Edit Fiscal Year
     task to edit the name and period end dates.
  11. As you complete the task, consider:
    Option Description
    Fiscal Year Number
    For the previous fiscal year, Workday subtracts 1 from the earliest existing fiscal year; for the next fiscal year, Workday adds 1 to the latest.
    Fiscal Year Start Date
    For the next fiscal year, Workday sets this date to the first day after the end date of the preceding fiscal year.
Fiscal schedules are distinct from your calendar years, though the two might coincide. A fiscal schedule consists of posting intervals, the chronological periods into which you divide the calendar. You can also combine several posting intervals into consolidated reporting units, such as a quarters or half years, or fiscal summary schedules. Because financial transactions and events have an associated date, you can use your fiscal schedule and fiscal years to control accounting and reporting.
Associate the fiscal schedule as the primary or the alternate fiscal schedule with your companies using the
Edit Company Accounting Details
 task. Then use the fiscal years to build a specific ledger year and its ledger periods for the company using the
Create Ledger Year and Ledger Periods
 task.
For a list of related reports and their descriptions, access the
Workday Standard Reports
 report and select the
Set Up Fiscal Schedule
 report category.