Can I change the General Ledger with a Budget Comparison from a calendar year to a fiscal year

Hi @Olsen, Beth E,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

According to your concern, in the Excel “General Ledger with a Budget Comparison” template, the months and totals are driven by date logic in the sheet, so to go from Jan–Dec to a Jul–Jun fiscal year, you need to adjust the underlying month start/end dates (and/or add fiscal helper fields). However, Excel doesn’t provide a built‑in toggle for this template, so you have to adjust them manually.

To change the template's months to Jul-Jun, please follow these steps:

• First open the “General Ledger with a Budget Comparison” template and go to Monthly Expenses Summary sheet
• Select the month headers (usually starting from D5) > rename the first cell D5 to July and drag it to cell O5. Excel will automatically fill the months for you.

• Next step, drag the account title pane down, you will see two blank rows 3 and 4. Select range D3 to O4 and change the font color to black to see the hidden formula used there

• In cell D3, change the data to your starting date of the fiscal year (for example 7/1/2025), then in cell E3, use this formula =EDATE(D3,1)

• Then select cell E3 and drag the formula to cell O3. Now the starting and ending date of each month will match with the month header below. Then drag back the account title pane back to cover the data and you can use the template in fiscal year calendar.

Hope this information will help. Please follow these steps and let me know if it works for you. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to share them in the comments so I can continue to support you.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. I'm looking forward to your reply.

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Excel doesn’t have a built-in switch to change an existing “General Ledger with Budget Comparison” report from a calendar year to a fiscal year. To report July–June instead of January–December, the data and/or formulas must be structured around fiscal periods rather than calendar years.

Typical approaches are:

1. Add a fiscal-year column to the source data
   • Insert a helper column that calculates the fiscal year based on the transaction date, for example (conceptually):
     • If month >= 7, fiscal year = calendar year + 1
     • Else fiscal year = calendar year
   • Add another helper column for fiscal period (e.g., July = Period 1, August = Period 2, …, June = Period 12).
   • Base PivotTables, SUMIFS, or other summary formulas on these fiscal fields instead of calendar year/month.
2. Redesign the report layout around fiscal periods
   • Replace calendar-based columns (Jan–Dec) with fiscal periods (e.g., Period 1–12 or Jul–Jun labels).
   • Point budget and actual formulas (SUMIFS, INDEX/MATCH, etc.) to the fiscal-year and fiscal-period columns.
3. If the data comes from a financial system
   • Configure the fiscal calendar in the source system (for example, Dynamics products) so that exported data already aligns to July–June fiscal years, then rebuild the Excel report on that export.

There is no one-click setting in Excel to “change the report to fiscal year”; it must be done by adjusting the underlying date logic and report formulas to use fiscal-year definitions.

References:

• Dynamics GP General Ledger
• Work with accounting periods and fiscal years
• Change the fiscal period setup in General Ledger in Microsoft Dynamics GP
• Change or reassign a ledger calendar
• Missing fiscal calendar for budget: Error code: ERR00002