Background

Changing the last month of your fiscal year requires starting a "Short Year." You can never close off more then 12 months at a time - so to change the ending month you will always need to close less then 12 months. This can be a little confusing - so the rest of this article has steps on how to complete this as well as examples.

How To Change the Last Month of Your Fiscal Year

There are a few steps that need to be followed to change the last month of your fiscal year.

1. Choose Setup > Company Information from the top of the screen
2. Write down your Current Last Month and Current Fiscal Year
3. Write down the New Last Month and New Fiscal Year you want to report on
4. Knowing the New Last Month and New Fiscal Year you want to report on allows us to determine when our short year is going to be. We need to make sure that the new year will have a full 12 month period.

Example The current Last Month is January and the Fiscal Year is 2025 (ie: Your Fiscal Year currently runs February 2024-January 2025). You want to change the Last Month of your New Fiscal Year to be December of 2025. To do this you would need to Start a New Fiscal Year making the year 2024 and the Last Month December. After this you can Start the New Year again to move into December of 2025.

Start a New Fiscal Year Procedure

1. Backup your company file
2. Go to Setup > Company Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen
3. Write down your Current Last Month and Current Fiscal Year
4. Write down the new Last Month and New Fiscal Year you want to report on
5. Go to File > Start a New Year > Start a New Fiscal Year
6. Click Next and then Next Again
7. Enter in the Last Month as the NEW last month that you want
8. Enter in either the current Fiscal Year or the previous Fiscal Year (again - you can only close 12 months or LESS at a time)
9. Continue through the Start a New Fiscal Year process (see this article for further information)
10. If necessary go through the Start a New Fiscal Year process again so that you end up in the proper year

Further Examples

This section has two further examples as well as the Start a New Fiscal Year procedure applied to these examples.

Example 1
The current Last Month is September and the Fiscal Year is 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025). You want the Last Month of the current year to be December 2025. This means that we need to close the period from October 2024 to December 2024.

1. Backup your company file
2. Go to Setup > Company Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen
3. The Current Last Month is September and the Current Fiscal Year is 2025
4. The New Last Month is December and the New Fiscal Year is 2025
5. Go to File > Start a New Year > Start a New Fiscal Year
6. Click next and then next again
7. Enter in the Last Month as December
8. Enter in the New Fiscal Year as 2024
9. Continue through the Start a New Year process (see this article for further information)
10. Backup your company file again
11. Go through the Start a New Fiscal Year process again this time leaving the Last Month as is (it will already be December) and making the New Fiscal Year 2025

Example 2
The current Last Month is December and the Fiscal Year is 2025. You want the Last Month to be September and the Fiscal Year to be 2026. This means that we need to close the period from January 2025 to September 2025.

1. Backup your company file
2. Go to Setup > Company Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen
3. The Current Last Month is December and the Current Fiscal Year is 2025
4. The New Last Month is September and the New Fiscal Year is 2026
5. Go to File > Start a New Year > Start a New Fiscal Year
6. Click next and then next again
7. Enter in the Last Month as September
8. Enter in the New Fiscal Year as 2025
9. Continue through the Start a New Year process (see this article for further information)
10. Backup your company file again
11. Go through the Start a New Fiscal Year process again this time leaving the Last Month as is (it will already be September) and making the New Fiscal Year 2026