Accounting Period Adjustments (Soft Periods)

One type of reporting prompt, Accounting Period, enables you to adjust a numeric year/period prompted value by a defined number of years/periods. This is so that you can create reports that include data from last period, this period last year, and so on.

To do this, set the Type field on the reporting prompt record to "Accounting Period", then append the prompted value adjustment formula to the prompt tagClosed Placeholder used instead of a specific value in filter conditions. The real value is provided by the user at run time. in the Value field on the related reporting filter, like this:

AccountingPeriod Y-1 P-1

where AccountingPeriod is the prompt tagClosed Placeholder used instead of a specific value in filter conditions. The real value is provided by the user at run time. on the reporting prompt mappingClosed Map reporting prompts to the related reporting filters. and the rest is the adjustment formula. You must select the prompt tag checkbox. When adjustments include both a year and period adjustment, you must always begin with the year adjustment.

Example prompted value adjustments based on 12 periods per year
Prompted Value Adjustment Formula Effect Result
2010/006 Y+1 P"“1 Previous period next year 2011/005
2010/006 Y"“2 P"“0 Same period two years ago 2008/006
2010/006 Y"“0 P+62 62 periods into the future 2016/008
2010/006 Y"“0 P"“1 Previous period 2010/005
2011/001 Y"“0 P=000 Period 000 of the current year 2011/000
2010/006 Y+0 P+0 No effect 2010/006
2010/006 Y"“0 P"“0 No effect 2010/006
2010/006 blank No effect 2010/006

* Note that special periods are skipped.

Examples illustrating the = operator (overrides the prompted year or period with the given parameter):

= operator examples
Prompted Value Adjustment Formula Result
2012/005 Y=2011 P"“0 2011/005
2012/005 Y=2011 P=002 2011/002
2012/005 Y=2012 P"“10 2011/007
2011/007 Y"“1 P=10 2010/010
2010/003 Y=2007 P"“2 2007/001
2012/001 Y=2010 P"“3 2009/010
Notes:
  • The order of parameters is significant. When adjustments include both a year and period adjustment, you must always begin with the year adjustment.
  • Although an empty adjustment has no effect, we recommend you always provide an adjustment formula for reporting prompts of type Accounting Period, even if it has no effect (Y"“0 P"“0).
  • The year must be a 4-digit numeric value.
  • The period must be a 3-digit numeric value.
  • The period adjustment feature of the application does not derive the special periods 000, 100, and 101 from a prompted period, but you can specify a special period as a fixed value in the adjustment formula, for example Y"“0 P=000.
  • Note the space used as a separator character in the examples.

If your financial years or periods are not numeric, such as FY2012/001, contact Certinia Customer Support for advice.