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Setting Up Periods

Periods are time periods that are used in your business, such as Q1 2002 or Jan. 2001. Periods are used extensively in the Siebel application, such as in forecasting, time sheets, incentive compensation, and expense reports.

Be sure to set up periods far enough into the future that forecasting will work. For example, the default forecast is for seven months ahead. Therefore, if you keep this default, you must create periods defined for at least seven months from the current date for forecasting to work correctly.

After setting up a period, you can associate Period Units with it. Period Units allow you to define one time unit in terms of another. For example, day periods can be associated with week periods for use in Timesheets. When a new timesheet is created, based on a week period, each day in that week is also added to the timesheet. This functionality requires the day periods to be associated as Period Units with the week period.

To set up periods

1. Navigate to the Administration - Data screen > Periods view.
2. In the Period Definition list, create a new record and complete the necessary fields.

   Some fields are described in the following table.

   Field	Comments
   Period	Enter a name for the period, such as Q1 2001.
   Closed	Select this to indicate that the period has already closed.
   Start	Enter the start date for the period.
   End	Enter the end date for the period.
   Type	Select the type of period, such as month, quarter, or year.
   Description	Enter a description of the period.

To associate period units with a period

1. Navigate to the Administration - Data screen > Periods view, and select the appropriate period.
2. In the Period Units list, create a new record.
3. In the Period Units dialog box, select all the period units to associate with this period, and then click OK.