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.
Choose Setup > Company Information from the top of the screen
Write down your Current Last Month and Current Fiscal Year
Write down the New Last Month and New Fiscal Year you want to report on
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
Go to Setup > Company Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen
Write down your Current Last Month and Current Fiscal Year
Write down the new Last Month and New Fiscal Year you want to report on
Go to File > Start a New Year > Start a New Fiscal Year
Click Next and then Next Again
Enter in the Last Month as the NEW last month that you want
Enter in either the current Fiscal Year or the previous Fiscal Year (again - you can only close 12 months or LESS at a time)
Continue through the Start a New Fiscal Year process (see this article for further information)
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.
Go to Setup > Company Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen
The Current Last Month is September and the Current Fiscal Year is 2025
The New Last Month is December and the New Fiscal Year is 2025
Go to File > Start a New Year > Start a New Fiscal Year
Click next and then next again
Enter in the Last Month as December
Enter in the New Fiscal Year as 2024
Continue through the Start a New Year process (see this article for further information)
Backup your company file again
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.
Go to Setup > Company Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen
The Current Last Month is December and the Current Fiscal Year is 2025
The New Last Month is September and the New Fiscal Year is 2026
Go to File > Start a New Year > Start a New Fiscal Year
Click next and then next again
Enter in the Last Month as September
Enter in the New Fiscal Year as 2025
Continue through the Start a New Year process (see this article for further information)
Backup your company file again
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