Fiscal Year

Purpose of the fiscal year

The fiscal year has nothing to do with financial accounting or booking revenue, because that is fully managed within the Finance Manager (in the Revenue Distribution tab) and the selections the user can make over there.

The main purpose for allocating a reservation to a fiscal year is to have the linked fiscal year drive the reservation number. It always starts with 22...... or 23.... of 24...... .
Other than that, the fiscal year concept can sometimes be used for fetching reservations to check / correct / export / recalculate in case of issues mainly as a 'scope-reducing' factor for the bulk action you are intending to do (i.e : export all reservations with status DEFINITIVE for fiscal year 2023).

However, in order to allocate a reservation to a fiscal year (this is where arrival & departure date limits enter into the picture), the system has to know what to do with a reservation which starts on for example on 25-12-23 and ends on 5-1-24. Should that be considered a 2023 or 2024 booking and hence should the number start with 23... or 24...?

Difference between Fiscal Year & Fiscal Year Ledger

There is a big difference between the concepts of the Fiscal Year & the Fiscal Year Ledger.

The fiscal year is used mainly for having the linked fiscal year drive the reservation number. All reservation numbers start with “000” followed by the last 2 digits of the fiscal year in which they are in (i.e 2022, 2023, etc…). In other words, the fiscal year is used to create the sequence for the reservation number. The fiscal year(s) can be setup within the Finance Manager in the Configuration menu in the Fiscal Years tab.
The fiscal year ledger is used to store all of your future payments into a “pending” ledger before redistributing the revenue. The fiscal year ledger is setup within the Finance Manager in the Configuration menu, in the Admin Organization tab.

Assigning arrival & departure limit dates to a fiscal year

A fiscal year is assigned to a reservation based on the arrival date and the departure date, and on their respective limits. The reservation belongs to the smallest fiscal year where the dates still are before their limits. :IF the arrival date is before the arrival limit AND the departure date is before the departure limit, :THEN the reservation belongs to (at the most) that fiscal year. This means that if either one of them, or possibly both of them are after their limit, the reservation belongs to (at least) the next fiscal year.

Any reservation where the first stay day starts after the arrival date limit is going to be outside the fiscal year you are trying to configure.
Any reservation where the last stay day ends after the departure date limit is ALSO going to be outside the fiscal year you are trying to configure.

For example, let's assume that a resort closes on the 31st of October and reopens on 1st of March. Let’s assume that the client managing this resort want all of the reservations for the period they are open to fall into the same fiscal year. If they setup the arrival date limit on 30th of October, if there is an arrival on October 31st, the reservation will be out of scope of the "current" fiscal year they are trying to setup.

Similarly, If the departure date limit is set to October 30th, then a departure that will take place on October 31st will be out of scope of the “current” fiscal year.

Please note that It is possible to setup the same date for arrival & departure date limits.

The suggested default setup of the fiscal year for resorts that have a closing date is therefore to use the end date of the calendar year (December 31st) as both arrival & departure date limit. This is because most of the time, campsites close before the end of the calendar year. This way, any arrival before or on the closing day will be calculated in the “current” fiscal year and the same goes for departures.

Examples

                           arrival limit   departure limit
  -------------------------+---------------+----------------------  fiscal year 2005
                           2006-01-03      2006-01-19
  
  
      arrival        departure
  ----+==============+--------------------------------------------  reservation in fiscal year 2005 (before both limits)
      2005-12-13     2005-12-28
  
  -----------------------+==============+-------------------------  reservation in fiscal year 2005 (before both limits)
                         2006-01-01     2006-01-16
  
  ----+=================================================+---------  reservation in fiscal year 2006 (after departure limit)
      2005-12-13                                        2006-02-11
  
  --------------------------+===========+-------------------------  reservation in fiscal year 2006 (after arrival limit)
                            2006-01-04  2006-12-16
  
  ----------------------------------+================+------------  reservation in fiscal year 2006 (after both limits)
                                    2006-01-12       2006-01-29