Accounting settings overview

Accounting Settings let you align EnergyCAP with your organization's financial calendar and reporting structure. You can define your fiscal year start month, choose how fiscal years are labeled, set up custom accounting periods, and rename period labels to match your organization's terminology. These settings affect how data is displayed in Powerviews, reports, and bill entry.

Where to find Accounting Settings

1. Go to the Accounts module.
2. Open the module menu (three stacked lines) and select Accounting Settings.
3. This opens the dialog for Accounting Settings.
   
   

In Accounting Settings, you can:

• Set the fiscal year start and end months.
• Create and manage user-defined accounting periods.
• Set accounting period names.

When you define a fiscal year, Powerviews display data based on that fiscal year configuration.

Configure the fiscal year

A fiscal year is a period a company or government uses for accounting purposes. It may or may not align with the calendar year.

1. Choose the first month of your organization's fiscal year. Common start months include:
   • July — public and government organizations
   • October — federal agencies
   • January or February — most businesses
   This month is used in reports and charts.
2. Choose how your organization labels the fiscal year. 

Most organizations label the fiscal year based on the end month.

Examples of fiscal year configuration

Ends rule example

A university's July 2019 to June 2020 fiscal year is labeled FY20.

Begins rule example

A retailer's February 2019 to January 2020 fiscal year is labeled FY19.

Calendarization method

The calendarization method lets you create user-defined calendar periods. After choosing user-defined periods for your calendarization method, remember to configure the new date ranges in the spreadsheet.

When switching back to the default calendar month method, reset the accounting calendar by deleting your user-defined periods.

Accounting period names

Accounting periods offer an additional way to track and report bills, separate from billing periods.

Why use accounting periods?

• Billing period = when the energy was used
• Accounting period = When the bill was paid or posted to the financial system

Using both lets you report bills based on use and financial activity, depending on your reporting needs.

You can use Accounting period names to change the default EnergyCAP names to match your company's names.

The accounting period is not assigned automatically.

• Enter it during manual bill entry.
• Add to the bill import file.

Accounting period name

The accounting period name is displayed on bills and reports.

Accounting period number

The accounting period number is used for bill import.