How the Accounting Calendar Impacts Forecasting and Other Sales Features

The accounting calendar defines the start and end of your fiscal year and the time periods in that calendar, including the exact dates for each time period. Your sales application uses these defined periods, often called enterprise periods, for multiple purposes.

Here are some examples:

• Reports that provide amounts by enterprise period, such as a sales pipeline analysis

• Metrics calculations by period for territory analysis

• The ability to adjust forecast amounts by time period

• Distribution of quota amounts by time period

The period frequency set in your fiscal calendar is the shortest period you can use. Most sales organizations select monthly (the default setting in Setup Assistant). A monthly period frequency enables you to generate monthly forecasting windows that permit your organization to update quarterly forecasts. And you can break down activities and reports by month and summarize by quarter and year. If you set the period frequency to yearly, then you can create reports and activities for the year, but cannot break them down by month. If you set the period frequency to weekly, then you can perform activities and generate reports by week, quarter, and year, but not by month because the number of weeks varies by month.