Contents
📝 Note: This article is about changing the date range for a company or group. To learn how to change the date range in a financial statement in reports, please see our 'Financial Statements & Tables in Reports' article.
Understanding monthly, quarterly, and annual results
After importing your monthly results from your accounting system, you're able to view Fathom for any monthly, quarterly, or annual period that you've imported in the Analysis and Reporting tools.
This includes month-to-date (MTD), quarter-to-date (QTD) and year-to-date (YTD) results.
📝 Note: Fathom does not currently provide daily or weekly reporting or custom reporting periods (e.g. 4-4-5 or 13 months) or specific date ranges (e.g. 15th of last month to 15th of this month).
Monthly periods are based on a standard calendar month. However, quarterly and annual reporting periods are based on the financial year of the company in Fathom.
The starting month of your company’s financial year in Fathom is determined by the financial year defined in your source accounting system (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage Business Cloud Accounting, or MYOB) or in cell B2 of your Excel import sheet.
📝 Note: It's important to ensure that you've selected the correct financial year for your company, as this will affect QTD and YTD results. You can view your current financial year from 'Step 2 - Company Profile' in the company settings.
How much data can I import?
You can import a maximum of 8 years of monthly data for your companies. For best performance, we recommend not importing more than 5 years of monthly data. This is long enough that you're able to view meaningful trends into the past while ensuring that Fathom's performance isn't affected.
If you have imported 8 years of data, Fathom will no longer allow you to update recent periods. You will need to delete some historical periods to allow further updates.
Changing the date range of financial results
Removing earlier periods
You're able to remove data for earlier periods that you've already imported into Fathom.
This can be done from 'Step 1 - Update Data > Remove Periods' in the company settings.
There are two options:
From and including - this will remove your most recent monthly data
Before and including - this will remove your earliest imported data
When selecting the “before and including” option, it is important to note that you are deleting historical periods that will effectively change the starting date of your company data in Fathom.
❗Notice: Unless your data is imported from Xero or QuickBooks Online, once the starting date of your data has been altered by removing historical periods, these periods cannot be re-added, except by deleting and re-importing the company to Fathom.
Importing current month results (MTD)
By default, Fathom will automatically update your data to the nearest completed month. For example, on 28th March, Fathom's results will only import up to the nearest completed month, ie. February.
However, when importing your data from Xero, QuickBooks Online, or MYOB AccountRight Live, you can choose instead to allow Fathom to automatically update your data to include the current month's results.
For more details, view our dedicated article on Automatic Updates.
Financial/Fiscal Year
The financial year for your company is defined in your accounting system (e.g. Xero, QuickBooks, MYOB, Excel).
For QuickBooks Online or Xero users, you can change your financial year at any time. Simply change the financial year in the accounting system, and update the company in Fathom.
For companies imported from QuickBooks Desktop, MYoB, or Excel, the financial year cannot be changed after the initial import into Fathom. If the financial year needs to be changed, then the company will have to be re-imported, and the settings copied over to the new company according to the process outlined in this article.
Viewing Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly results
Monthly Results (and MTD)
When viewing the analysis tools or reports, you're able to select monthly results for any historical month that you've imported for your company.
If you've imported the current month's results, you'll be able to select the current month to show MTD results.
Quarterly results (and QTD)
Quarterly periods will be based on the financial year of your company. For example, if your financial year is from July - June, Q1 will encompass July - September results.
You can also choose to show quarter-to-date (QTD) results. This will show results for a partial quarter of your choosing. In the above example, you can show Q1 results (YTD) ending in August, which will show results for July to August.
Annual results (and YTD)
Annual periods will start on the first month of your company's financial year.
For YTD reporting, the results will include data from the first month of your financial year through the most recently imported/updated period in Fathom. You can also select the ending month to view partial year (YTD) results.
Additional knowledge & common questions