The US federal government fiscal year runs October - September. Here in Hawaii, almost everyone’s FY is July-June. No issues there.
For example, our latest complete fiscal year was July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022. To me, this is referred to as “FY2022” and I believe Uncle Sam agrees with me:
When is the U.S. government’s fiscal year?
The federal government’s fiscal year runs from the first day of October of one calendar year through the last day of September of the next. For example, Fiscal Year 2021 (FY 2021) started on Oct.1, 2020, and ended on Sept. 30, 2021.
However, our new accountant just told us that “FY2021” refers to the year that STARTS in 2021 and ends in 2022. And our also-new assistant executive director agreed with her.
I think they’re both using a non-standard definition. What is YOUR definition of FYxxxx?
Well, I can speak for Massachusetts, where I’m on the town finance committee. We use the same definition as you, which is that FY 2022 ends on June 30, 2022.
More generally, I thought the term fiscal year always refer to a year that did not end in December, and which was identified by the ending year. I think you are right, and the people you were talking to are wrong.
It depends on the company, doesn’t it? For example, the company I work for had a fiscal year that started Jan 1 until we got acquired by a company with a fiscal year that starts April 1.
My client’s fiscal year starts Oct 1.
It’s basically whatever the company declares their fiscal year to be for tax or accounting and budgetary reporting purposes.
I’ve worked at five companies in my career (all U.S.-based); at four of them, including where I work now, the fiscal year was/is exactly the same as the calendar year. The companies all still specifically referred to their “fiscal years” in financial reporting, even though it was the same as the calendar year. So, for me, at this current job, FY 2022 ends on 12/31/22.
The first company where I worked had a March-to-February fiscal year; their “FY 1990” ended on February 28th, 1990. Company history indicated that they adopted that March 1st FY start to reflect doing inventories after the holiday season (i.e., in January and February), and thus, closed the books for the “year” after that was completed.
Fiscal years are referenced by their end date or end year. For example, to reference a nonprofit organization’s fiscal year, you may say, “FY 2020” or “fiscal year ending June 30, 2020.” Similarly, if you referred to government spending that occurred on Nov. 15, 2019, you would label that as an expenditure for the fiscal year 2020.
That wasn’t my question, but it seems that so far 100% of the answers to what I asked agree with my answer - namely that the “FYxxxx” label uses the END of the fiscal year to define the year.
Here in Australia the financial year ends 30 June. The 3 different systems used by the state government over the last 30 odd years all refer to the financial year just as you do. FY 2022 ended on June 30, 2022. We are now in FY 2023.
In order to avoid this confusion, particularly with a client that has a January Fiscal Year End, I almost always will say FYE MM/YYYY. Yes, FY2022 should generally mean the year ending 2022, but you can take the extra 4 key strokes to make it obvious.
Just to be (sorta) contrarian, though Australian I work for a Japanese company where the fiscal year is April to March. We are still in FY22 (FY2022-23) which will finish in Mar-23. We have just completed budgeting/BPlanning for FY23 (which runs from Apr-23 to Mar-24)
Yes, the answer varies by who you ask. I used to work with Fortune 500 company data and IIRC for each month there was at least one company that began/ended their fiscal year there.
Nonprofit employee here. Our fiscal year runs Oct-Sep and is defined by the year that the time period ends. Therefore as of November 11, 2022 we are in the 2023 fiscal year.
In my experience companies in the retail space who have fiscal years ending at the end of January (in order to capture both the holiday season and the post holiday reckoning in the same year, refer to the fiscal year by the year in which the first 11 months fall.
For example, Macy’s 2021 fiscal year ended on January 29, 2022.
Conversely the fiscal years that end in the middle of the calendar year (June 30 or thereabouts) or later (e.g. Sept 30 for some businesses tied to school years) are referred to by the year in which they end.