• From: Australia
  • Registered: 01/25/2015
  • Posts: 32

Topic: Replacement for Fiscal Years admin function

Hi,

I have been using FrontAccounting for several years and one of the things that has annoyed me is that the Fiscal Years admin function is difficult to use and limited in functionality. At first glance it appears to be able to do anything you could want it to, but you will quickly find (and an inspection of the code will confirm) that the validation will not allow you to change the year start, and the year end must be the year start plus one year less a day, so you can enter anything you like but there is only one valid combination.

My Fiscal Years Replacement extension addresses both of these issues. I have replaced the start and end date fields with a single button to add a new year, which is a much simpler UI, with the identical functionality. If there is only one fiscal year (and no transactions) the start date can be changed to whatever is required (the end date will be set to the start date plus a year less one day). Once transactions have been entered (or there is more than one fiscal year) the start date is fixed and can not be changed.

The module can be downloaded from:

https://github.com/PaulShipley/admin_fiscalyear

For a full description see

https://paulshipley.id.au/blog/frontaccounting/fiscal-years-replacement/

PaulShipley's Website

  • From: Singapore, India, Chennai
  • Registered: 05/02/2009
  • Posts: 6,089

Re: Replacement for Fiscal Years admin function

Consider truncated fiscal years where the end_date is not 1 year ahead.

apmuthu's Website

  • From: Australia
  • Registered: 01/25/2015
  • Posts: 32

Re: Replacement for Fiscal Years admin function

Hi Apmuthu, I did consider this, and while technically easy to do, I'm not so sure about the accounting wisdom. The existing code only allows fiscal years of a full year in length and I didn't want to change more than necessary. I could see this happening if the existing company changed it's fiscal year start/end dates, then the transition year would be truncated. I would suggest that in that case it would be better to start a new FA company with the new dates and transition from the old FA company to the new one. Of course if someone with more accounting expertise than I would like to advise, that would be great.

PaulShipley's Website

  • From: Singapore, India, Chennai
  • Registered: 05/02/2009
  • Posts: 6,089

Re: Replacement for Fiscal Years admin function

Generally this is a one time correction best done in the FA DB directly instead of an extension unless many moons have passed with lots of transactions that need to be tinkered with!

apmuthu's Website