Fiscal Year to Date vs. Prior Fiscal Year to Date in Tableau

By: Eric Parker

Eric Parker lives in Seattle and has been teaching Tableau and Alteryx since 2014. He's helped thousands of students solve their most pressing problems. If you have a question, feel free to reach out to him directly via email. You can follow him on LinkedIn or sign up for a Tableau Office Hour to work with him directly!

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Many organizations report against a fiscal calendar which doesn't align with the standard calendar year. If your organization's fiscal year starts in October or July, you know what I'm talking about.

We've created a handful of resources documenting how to use calculations to monitor year to date performance compared to prior year to date performance, but we've never addressed how to do this if you're operating on fiscal years.

**Disclaimer: this approach will work best if your organization's fiscal years starts on the first day of a month. If it varies, this approach might not be right for you.**

Inspired by my friends at the Federal Aviation Administration in a recent training, I created this video to demonstrate how to use calculations in Tableau to compare fiscal year to date values to prior fiscal year to date values.

Access/download the Tableau Workbook from the demo here.

Related Resources

Calculation Logic

Order Date FY (for calcs):

DATEADD('month',3,[Order Date ])

Current FY:

YEAR({MAX([Order Date FY (for calcs)])})

Prior FY:

[Current FY] - 1

Fiscal YTD Sales:

IF YEAR([Order Date FY (for calcs)]) = [Current FY] THEN [Sales] END

Prior Fiscal YTD Sales:

IF YEAR([Order Date FY (for calcs)]) = [Prior FY] AND DATEPART('dayofyear',[Order Date FY (for calcs)]) <= DATEPART('dayofyear',{MAX([Order Date FY (for calcs)])}) THEN [Sales] END

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