When you recognize revenue, the start and end dates of the resulting periods are derived from either a fiscal calendar that you have defined using recognition years and periods, or from the Gregorian calendar (January 1 - December 31). Specifically:
- If you are recognizing revenue against source records (sometimes known as Actuals
Refers to the original revenue recognition process where staging data is generated for source records. The Recognize Revenue page and Recognize All use this process.), you must create recognition years and periods for templates using the "Equal Split" template type with the calculation type of either "445" or "Month / Part Periods". Other templates use the Gregorian calendar. - If you are recognizing revenue against revenue schedules, you must create recognition periods for all the periods you expect to recognize scheduled revenue. If you are generating revenue schedules but not recognizing revenue against them, the Gregorian calendar is used if you do not create recognition years and periods.
If you do define recognition years and periods, they should be set up to match those used in your financial system. A year does not need to start on January 1 and end on December 31. Note that:
- You must create years and periods in chronological order. However, you can create all your year records first and then calculate periods.
- You must create enough years to cover the full life of all active source records that are associated with any Equal Split template in your organization.
- Years cannot overlap or have a gap between them.
- Periods cannot overlap or have a gap between them.
- All existing periods are open. There is no concept of a closed period.
- You can only edit the details of a recognition year record up until the time that its periods are calculated. However you can make limited changes to period start and end dates.
- You cannot delete a year once subsequent years exist. If you need to delete a year, you must delete them in reverse chronological order.
- You cannot delete periods directly. The only way to remove a period is to delete its year record.
Editing Period Start and End Dates
Periods are automatically generated. See the related topics for more information.
You can make limited changes to the start date and end date after generation. However, the edited dates must be within the previous and next period time frame.
When you edit period dates the corresponding changes are made to related year and period details and the dates on the year record.