Fiscal Quarter Planning

Budget allocation across fiscal quarters with FQ/FY notation, leap year impact, and daily run rates.

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How does a flat quarterly budget translate to different daily costs when fiscal quarters have different lengths? This example models an Australian SaaS company’s $4.8M engineering budget across fiscal quarters (July fiscal year start), showing how FQ notation, calendar-correct arithmetic, and the leap year impact combine.

The complete CalcMark file is available at testdata/examples/fiscal-quarter-planning.cm.

Frontmatter #

The fiscal_year_starts key enables FQ and FY notation:

---
fiscal_year_starts: july
---

You can also specify a start day: fiscal_year_starts: July 15.

CalcMark features: fiscal_year_starts frontmatter key.

FQ Notation #

FQ1 through FQ4 resolve to the first day of each fiscal quarter. end of FQ1 gives the last day.

fq1_start = FQ1
fq1_end = end of FQ1
fq2_start = FQ2
fq2_end = end of FQ2

CalcMark features: FQ1-FQ4 notation; end of modifier.

Calendar vs. Fiscal #

Calendar Q3 (July) is Fiscal Q1 when the fiscal year starts in July:

cal_q3 = Q3
fiscal_q1 = FQ1

CalcMark features: Q1-Q4 (always calendar); FQ1-FQ4 (fiscal, requires frontmatter).

Daily Run Rates #

Same $1.2M per quarter, different daily costs because quarters have 90-92 days:

quarterly_budget = $4,800,000 / 4
fq1_daily = quarterly_budget / 92
fq3_daily = quarterly_budget / 90

Leap Year Impact #

FQ3 spans January-March. In a leap year, that’s 91 days instead of 90:

fy24_fq3 = Apr 1 2024 - Jan 1 2024
fy25_fq3 = Apr 1 2025 - Jan 1 2025
leap_difference = Apr 1 2024 - Jan 1 2024 - (Apr 1 2025 - Jan 1 2025)

CalcMark features: Calendar-correct date subtraction; leap year handling.

Key Dates #

FQ notation composes with arithmetic:

board_review = FQ3 + 15 days
budget_lock = end of this fiscal year - 2 weeks

CalcMark features: FQ + duration arithmetic; end of this fiscal year.