Updating the Charity's Fiscal Year
A charity's fiscal year may run the same as the calendar year or it may run from April 1 of one year until March 31 of the following year.
We usually name fiscal years but the year they start so an April 1, 2015 - March 31, 2016 would be referred to as Fiscal 2015.
Every campaign which initiates in the new fiscal year uses the Current Year value. In the case above, it would be 2015. All donor records and campaign totals are accumulated by fiscal year. In the case of donors, the First Year Donated and Last Year Donated are updated to show the first fiscal year they supported the charity and the last year they have continued their support. These numbers and accumulated dollars are updated when Update to Master is run.
The Current Year and Year End values are displayed in Organizational Defaults under the Other tab. These values should never be updated manually and a warning message is provided to remind users that this is not recommended.
The Campaign Listing with Total Dollars found under Reports \ Campaign Reports is used to ensure the year balances. The Incomplete Donation Handling Report found under Reports \ Donor Receipting identifies batches where donations in the current fiscal year have not been Updated to Master. This must be completed before the Campaign Listing with Total Dollars can be run.