1. Implementation Guide
  2. Data File Generation
  3. Dimension Files
  4. Calendar File

Calendar File

The calendar file contains your primary business or fiscal calendar, defined at the fiscal-period level of detail. The most common fiscal calendar used is a 4-5-4 National Retail Federation (NRF) calendar or a variation of it with different year-ending dates. This calendar defines the financial, analytical, or planning periods used by the business. It must contain some form of fiscal calendar, but if you are a business that operates solely on the Gregorian calendar, a default calendar file can be generated by an ad hoc batch program to initialize the system. However, if you are implementing a planning solution, you must use the Fiscal Calendar as your primary calendar, and only this calendar will be integrated from the data warehouse to Planning.

Table 8-5 Calendar File Required Fields

Column Header Usage

MCAL_CAL_ID

Identifies the accounting calendar. At this time a hard-coded value of Retail Calendar~41 is expected here, no other value should be used.

MCAL_PERIOD_TYPE

Identifies the accounting period type (4 or 5). This represents if the fiscal period has 4 or 5 weeks.

MCAL_PERIOD_NAME

Name of the fiscal period, such as Period01, Period02, and so on. Do not include the year in this name, as the system will automatically add that during the load.

MCAL_PERIOD

Period number within a year, for a 4-5-4 calendar this should be between 1 and 12.

MCAL_PERIOD_ST_DT

Identifies the first date of the period in YYYYMMDD format (default format can be changed in CTX files).

MCAL_PERIOD_END_DT

Identifies the last date of the period in YYYYMMDD format (default format can be changed in CTX files).

MCAL_QTR

Identifies the quarter of the year to which this period belongs. Possible values are 1, 2, 3 and 4.

MCAL_YEAR

Identifies the fiscal year in YYYY format.

MCAL_QTR_START_DT

Identifies the start date of the quarter in YYYYMMDD format (default format can be changed in CTX files).

MCAL_QTR_END_DT

Identifies the end date of the quarter in YYYYMMDD format (default format can be changed in CTX files).

MCAL_YEAR_START_DT

Identifies the start date of the year in YYYYMMDD format (default format can be changed in CTX files).

MCAL_YEAR_END_DT

Identifies the end date of the year in YYYYMMDD format (default format can be changed in CTX files).

The hard-coded calendar ID is used to align with several internal tables that are designed to support multiple calendars but currently have only one in place, and that calendar uses the provided value of MCAL_CAL_ID above.

The fiscal calendar should have, at a minimum, a 5-year range (2 years in the past, the current fiscal year, and 2 years forward from that) but is usually much longer so that you do not need to update the file often. Most implementations should start with a 10-15 year fiscal calendar length. The calendar should start at least 1 full year before the planned beginning of your history files and extend at least 1 year beyond your expected business needs in all RAP modules.

Example data for the CALENDAR.csv file columns above: 

MCAL_CAL_ID,MCAL_PERIOD_TYPE,MCAL_PERIOD_NAME,MCAL_PERIOD,MCAL_PERIOD_ST_DT,MCAL_PERIOD_END_DT,MCAL_QTR,MCAL_YEAR,MCAL_QTR_START_DT,MCAL_QTR_END_DT,MCAL_YEAR_START_DT,MCAL_YEAR_END_DT
Retail Calendar~41,4,Period01,1,20070204,20070303,1,2007,20070204,20070505,20070204,20080202
Retail Calendar~41,5,Period02,2,20070304,20070407,1,2007,20070204,20070505,20070204,20080202
Retail Calendar~41,4,Period03,3,20070408,20070505,1,2007,20070204,20070505,20070204,20080202
Retail Calendar~41,4,Period04,4,20070506,20070602,2,2007,20070506,20070804,20070204,20080202