Changing Fiscal Periods

Your organization might make changes to your fiscal period labels or terminology, or make adjustments to your fiscal periods. It's important to reach out to your CSM in either case. In this article, we'll walk through:
 

• Making changes to your fiscal period terminology
• Making changes to your fiscal periods

Note: Clari does not update your fiscal periods. This is done in Salesforce by your company's Salesforce admin. Then, Clari pulls that data from Salesforce.
 

Changing Fiscal Period Terminology

If you organization is changing your Fiscal Period terminology without making any adjustments to your actual fiscal periods, then we can adjust your Forecast Call and Quota labels to match. Please open a support ticket for assistance.

Example: Perhaps your fiscal year begins in February and ends in December. If this is the case, then you might call the year that begins in Feb 2019 and ends in Feb 2020 "FY2019" because the fiscal year begins in 2019.

At some point, however, you might decide to change your terminology so that this year is called "FY2020" instead — since it ends in 2020. This would be a change to your fiscal period terminology, but not your actual fiscal periods — since your fiscal year still begins in February and ends in December, and your quarter periods are remaining the same.
 

Changing Fiscal Periods 

If your organization adjusts to your fiscal periods (i.e., shifting your fiscal year to begin in February instead of January), then you have 2 options in Clari:

1. Create a 1-month quarter (i.e., January is a 1-month quarter)

2. Create a 4-month quarter (i.e., October - January is a 4-month quarter)


Note: Clari does not create these quarters for you. This is done by your company's Salesforce admin in Salesforce. Then, Clari pulls this information from Salesforce.
 

What will my old quarters/fiscal periods look like?

Clari will segment all past, current, and future quarters according to your new fiscal periods moving forward with the only exception being the 1 or 4-month quarter.

How will my analytics (i.e., historical conversion rates) be affected?

Moving forward, Clari will segment your past quarters according to your new fiscal periods, which will affect your historical conversion rates. The less consistent your historical conversion rates are throughout the quarter, the more your historical conversion rates will be affected as you transition to your new fiscal period.

Trend, for example, looks at the current quarter and compares it to the same day in previous quarters. That "same day" is determined by the number of days remaining in the quarter, and changing your fiscal periods — and therefore your quarters — has an effect on this determination.

Example with a 1-Month Quarter

Note: This is only available when using Customer Fiscal Periods in Salesforce.

In this example:

• Your new fiscal period begins in February
• We created a 1-month quarter (January) for Q5 of the previous FY

If it is April 1st — or about day 60 — of your new February to April quarter, then there are 30 days remaining in that quarter. So, Trend determines the "same day" in your 1-month quarter by finding the day on which there were 30 days remaining in your 1-month quarter. In this case, that's January 2nd.

In this scenario, January used to be Month 1 of the quarter. April, however, is now Month 3 of the quarter. Now, if your conversion rates are pretty consistent throughout the quarter, then it might still be pretty helpful to compare January to April in Trend.

However, if your conversion rates are not generally consistent — that is, if your sales throughout the quarter tend to look more like a hockey stick — then it's not going to be very useful to compare January to April, because your typical conversion rates in the 1st month of a quarter are quite different from your typical conversion rates in the 3rd month of a quarter.

For some organizations, comparing Month 3 of the CQ to Month 1 of a previous quarter may be like comparing apples to oranges.

Note: If there aren't enough days in the quarter, then Clari will consider the 1st day of the quarter the "same day." So, if there are 60 days remaining in your February - March - April quarter, then Trend is going to determine the "same" day in your 1-month quarter to be January 1st (or the 1st day of the 1-month quarter).

Again, January used to be Month 1 of the quarter, and March is now Month 2 of the quarter, so this comparison may or may not be useful depending on how different your organization's conversion rates typically are between Month 1 and Month 2 of the quarter.

Example with a 4-Month Quarter

Note: This is only available when using Customer Fiscal Periods in Salesforce

In this example:

• Your new fiscal period begins in February
• We created a 4-month quarter (October - January) for Q4 of the previous FY

If it is April 1st — or about day 60 — of your new February - April quarter, then there are 30 days remaining in that quarter. So, Trend is going to determine the "same day" in your 4-month quarter by finding the day on which there were 30 days remaining in your 4-month quarter, which would be January 2nd.
 

In this scenario, January used to be Month 1 of the quarter. April, however, is now Month 3 of the quarter. Now, if your conversion rates are pretty consistent throughout the quarter, then it might still be pretty helpful to compare January to April in Trend.

However, if your conversion rates are not generally consistent — that is, if your sales throughout the quarter tend to look more like a hockey stick — then it's not going to be very useful to compare January to April because your typical conversion rates in the 1st month of a quarter are quite different from your typical conversion rates in the 3rd month of a quarter.

For some organizations, comparing Month 3 of the CQ to Month 1 of a previous quarter may be like comparing apples to oranges.

How will changing my fiscal periods impact Forecasting?

While historical forecast submissions will remain in Clari, the historical fiscal periods will adjust according to your fiscal periods in Salesforce. So, we recommend exporting data from your Forecasting tabs in Clari before changing your fiscal periods so that you can perform analysis on historical fiscal periods outside of Clari when needed. 
 

Key Considerations

It's important to remember that these affects are temporary. Once your organization has worked through a minimum of at least 1 quarter or ideally 1 full fiscal year using your new fiscal periods, the Analytics Modules will have enough data on your new fiscal periods.

So, if your conversion rates are pretty consistent throughout the quarter, then you can simply create your 1-month quarter or your 4-month quarter, and let analytics adjust as time passes with the effects described above in mind.

Otherwise, you will want to consider selecting a cutoff date (i.e., February 1st) for Clari's AI to stop looking at your old historical conversion rates. If you choose to set a cutoff date, then you will need to work through a minimum of at least 1 entire quarter (from beginning to end) after that date before you can leverage analytics again.