MeridianMERIDIAN

Fiscal Year

datetime.period.fiscal_year

Fiscal year notation (FY prefix with 2 or 4-digit year). Common in corporate finance CSVs, government budget documents, and annual reports. The fiscal year ending period varies by organization — FY2024 may refer to a period ending in calendar 2024 or starting in 2024.

Worked samples

DuckDB 1.5.5 · finetype 0.6.64

ValueAs VARCHARyear
FY202420242024
FY242424
FY202320232023
FY252525

Shape

Length 4 to 6 characters.

Pattern
^FY\d{2,4}$
ValueLengthShape
FY20246matches
FY244matches
FY20236matches
FY254matches
FY202447rejected: one character extra

Background

Origin

The names of fiscal years are often shortened based on the calendar year in which they end.[1] Wikipedia's example is FY24 as an abbreviation for fiscal year 2023-2024.[1]

The US Government Accountability Office's budget glossary defines a fiscal year as any yearly accounting period, regardless of its relationship to a calendar year.[2] The fiscal year for the US federal government begins on October 1 of each year and ends on September 30 of the following year.[2] The GAO glossary says the federal fiscal year is designated by the calendar year in which it ends.[2] The GAO glossary's example is fiscal year 1990, which began October 1, 1989, and ended September 30, 1990.[2] Prior to fiscal year 1977, the federal fiscal year began on July 1 and ended on June 30.[2] The 3-month period from July 1, 1976, to September 30, 1976, between fiscal years 1976 and 1977, is called the transition quarter (TQ).[2] The present 1 October to 30 September federal fiscal year was introduced by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.[1]

FineType defines the fiscal_year type as fiscal year notation: an FY prefix with a 2 or 4-digit year.[3] FineType's definition notes that FY2024 may refer to a period ending in calendar 2024 or starting in 2024.[3]

Use

In the United Kingdom, the financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March for the purposes of government financial statements.[1] For UK personal tax purposes, the fiscal year starts on 6 April and ends on 5 April of the next calendar year.[1] Australia's financial year starts on 1 July and ends on 30 June the next year.[1] Australian financial years are designated by the calendar year of the second half of the period.[1] In India, the government's financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March the following year.[1] In Japan, the government's financial year is from 1 April to 31 March.[1]

A business may choose any consistent fiscal year that it wants.[1] Some companies, such as Cisco Systems, end their fiscal year on the same day of the week each year.[1] Under a same-weekday year end, some fiscal years have 52 weeks and others 53 weeks.[1] Sony Group's Consolidated Financial Summary for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 2025 refers readers to a presentation titled FY2024 Consolidated Financial Results.[4] Read an FY label as a name rather than a date: which twelve months it covers depends on the organisation that wrote it. (Meridian's view)

Before joining FY columns from two sources, find out each organisation's year end and whether its labels count the year the period starts or the year it ends. (Meridian's view) Two-digit labels such as FY24 leave the century to the reader, so expand them deliberately rather than letting a parser guess. (Meridian's view) Keep the original label as text beside any start and end dates you derive, so the source's own naming survives the conversion. (Meridian's view) Expect neighbouring spellings, such as a space after FY or a split year like FY2023-24, and decide whether to normalise them before you validate. (Meridian's view)

Sources

  1. [1]Fiscal yearsecondary source
  2. [2]GAO-05-734SP, A Glossary of Terms Used in the Federal Budget Processdocumentation
  3. [3]finetype/labels/definitions_datetime.yamlFineType
  4. [4]Consolidated Financial Summary for the Fiscal Year Ended March 31, 2025organisation

Detection notes

New in format coverage expansion. Fiscal year offset context varies by organization. broad_type is VARCHAR because calendar date mapping requires organization-specific fiscal calendar knowledge.

Use it

CLI · DuckDB
$ finetype infer -i "FY2024" --mode column
→ datetime.period.fiscal_year

SELECT ft_infer('FY2024');
-- → 'datetime.period.fiscal_year'
Cast expression
CAST(regexp_extract({col}, 'FY(\d{2,4})', 1) AS VARCHAR)

Schema

https://meridian.online/schemas/datetime.period.fiscal_year · Frictionless type string

finetype taxonomy datetime.period.fiscal_year -o json-schema

Type Registry