In Meisterplan, you can either plan in calendar years or fiscal years, with calendar years being the default. This article explains how to work with fiscal years.

• Configuring Fiscal Years
• Where You'll Notice Fiscal Years in Meisterplan
• Impact on Portfolio Budgets

Configuring Fiscal Years

If you want to plan in fiscal years instead of calendar years, you simply configure two things: The starting month for fiscal years, and how fiscal years should be displayed. To do so, follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Open Manage > Advanced.

Step 2: Under Advanced, select the desired month for Start of Fiscal Year.

Step 3: Under Display Fiscal Year Based On, you can select how your fiscal year is displayed.

Example: Your fiscal year starts in October 2019 and ends in September 2020.

• If you want to mark this period as fiscal year 2019, select Calendar Year of Start Month.
• If you want to mark this period as fiscal year 2020, select Calendar Year of End Month.

Where You'll Notice Fiscal Years in Meisterplan

In the Portfolio Designer, Meisterplan shows fiscal years at the top of the project Gantt chart:

In the Roadmap, the fiscal year is shown in a similar way:

In Meisterplan reports, years are grouped in the same way as displayed in the Portfolio Designer:

Impact on Portfolio Budgets

Availability Pro Premium

In the General section of your user group, you need to have the Access Financial Data right to access this function.

A couple of things regarding portfolio budgets work differently in Meisterplan depending on your fiscal year's start month. Please note that this is relevant even if you do not actively change the fiscal year starting month as shown above.

Restrictions on portfolio budget start dates

Depending on the fiscal year starting date as defined in Manage > General Settings, only some start dates for portfolio budgets are permitted. The following table gives an overview:

Budgets displayed in the Financial Section of the Portfolio Designer

Budgets will only get displayed in the Portfolio Designer if they have a permissible start date (see above). For other start dates, the budget will appear as if it were zero.