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(UK) Year End date change to bases period reforms

With the new basis period changes coming into effect, some clients may want to change their year-end from 30.09 to 31.03. Currently changing the year-end in Xero will cause previous opening balances to change and most likely mean any working papers produced in Xero will no longer match the accounts.

It would be a useful tool to have something whereby a previous accounting period end could be locked so a new year-end could be chosen without messing up the old year-end balances.

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Matthew Phillips shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
delivered  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded  · 

Hi team, I can now confirm we've now added the ability for you to create a short transition period (between 1 month and 12 months long) when changing the Financial Year End date within your organisations Financial Settings. 

Just to recap for anyone new coming across the idea here - Aligning with the UK basis period reforms we've made a change to Financial settings so you can add start and end dates to different periods. This change impacts multiple areas of Xero. 

  • Fixed assets will draw on this information, to prevent any loss of historic information when your year end changes. Everything will automatically be calculated for you based on the period start and end dates you set in Financial Settings. 
  • The same story will apply in Reporting. All historic reports will be protected. And you’ll have accurate comparison periods even across varied financial years. 
  • In Xero Tax, you’ll be able to enter transitional profit, and track this across five years. 
Show previous admin responses (3)
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  • Kelsey Ryan commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi, how when you say "providing in the near future" how long exactly will this be?

    We have just changed a companies year end from Aug 23 to 30 Apr 24 so need to prepare accounts for less than 12 months which I cannot do on Xero.

    This is very frustrating.

    Please can this function be implemented immediately to save a lot of stress.

  • Jill MacDonald commented  ·   ·  Report

    With the current basis period reform feature for changing year end, it only allows you to create a long transitional period greater than 12 months. If a previous year end was 30 April and the client is changing to 31 March, the only option is to create a 23 month month period from 1 May 2022 - 31 March 2024. There should be an option to create an 11 month period as the transitional period from 1 May 2023 - 31 March 2024.

  • Damien Pantling commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hello, not sure if this specific issue has been addressed yet. I'm an accountant in business and we have 21 Xero large limited company accounts (and growing) and a web-like group structure. We integrate with IRIS accounts production for stat accounts, and set a 9 month accounting period in Iris. When exporting from Xero to IRIS, IRIS sets the API to match Xero's year-end date, but given Xero cannot have accounting periods <12 months, we get 12 months of TB data come through into IRIS. We then have to manually adjust 21 companies for the 3 month double-count and i anticipate this will take me weeks, these are companies with complex balance sheets.
    If Xero could allow us to create <12m accounting periods, all problems would be solved and you would save me weeks of work and a lot of agony explain to stat auditors that our ERP can't comply with the companies act 2006!

    If you can't fix by Q3 2024, we will be well on our way to a competitor

  • Richard Proudlove commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,
    We really need the functionality to create transitional periods of less than 12 months ASAP. We have a number of clients who need to start to prepare management accounts from the end May and without this feature there is going to be a lot of manual work required.
    Thank you.

  • Nicci Atkinson commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,
    Any update on when it will be possible to create a transitional period of less than 12 months please?
    My client is changing from a June year end to March so needs a 9 month period.
    I am currently unable to provide any information for them beyond March 2024 so this quite urgent.
    Thanks

  • Graham Morrow commented  ·   ·  Report

    Basis period reform has resulted in many clients changing their accounting period end to 31 March. This can be achieved by either preparing accounts for a short period to 31 March 2024 or for a long period to 31 March 2025. It is obvious that the ability to prepare a short period is needed a year before the ability to prepare a long period. Xero, however seems to have the functionality of a long accounting period and not a short period. When will this be available? I have clients who are leaving there records in for the p/e 31 March 2024 and I can't work on them until this is sorted out. Urgent action by Xero is required.

  • Matthew Phillips commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,

    Is there any news on being able to change year-ends to periods shorter than 12 months? We need to be an option now as we have clients wanting us to prepare accounts for periods to 31.03.2024 relating to the basis period reforms.

    Thanks

  • Lindsay Holmes commented  ·   ·  Report

    I also require an update on this. I have a client with a 30.04 YE so their accounting period needs to be 11 months! They are now querying how to change this on Xero and there is no resolve....its the 5th April tomorrow!! Please advise

  • Claire Stephens commented  ·   ·  Report

    The ability to manage the financial year-end is a great addition, however, why is it that the transition period can only be more than 12 months? I have clients who have reduced their accounting period when changing year-end, as otherwise they would have a period longer than 18 months, which isn't allowed for limited companies. Currently, if I change the year-end without a transition period, I lose the previous year's data and the fixed assets entries undo themselves! If I add a transition period, it rolls two accounting periods into one of 19 months, so they won't agree with my statutory accounts. This is really not acceptable. We need this sorted asap - it's not just the basis period reforms which make this a priority as it applies to limited companies too.

  • Matthew Phillips commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,
    I note on some clients there is now an option to manage the year end which is great. Today I was going to test this on a farm client where we have prepared their accounts to 30.09.2023 as usual as they had recorded their livestock etc at this date. We then hope to change the year end to 31.03.2024 and have asked them to record stock at this date.

    When I went into the module to change the new start date from 01.10.2023 and the end date of 31.03.2024 I was presented with an error message that the new period had to be at least 12 months.

    We have many larger partnerships with April year ends and they needed an account to 30.04.2023 for the bank etc. Their new period in Xero would be expected to be 11 months to 31.03.2024.

    Are we now finding out that this cannot be done in Xero and we should have told the clients we cannot prepare the 30.04.2023 account and you will have to wait so we can prepare a 23 month account.

    Given it has taken Xero to mid March 2024 to release this we are very unhappy at the prospect of having to find a way around what we thought would be a straight forward update.

    We are hoping this can be addressed before 31.03.2024.

    Thanks
    Matthew

  • Ray CLARKE commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi Hannah G,
    As we are now less than a month until UK tax year end, can you confirm if Xero are going to implement the changes you talked about on 11 December 2023?Thanks
    Ray

  • Denise Scott commented  ·   ·  Report

    Maybe this update, which is essential for many sole trader and partnerships would have been a more important update to concentrate on than pushing the 'new invoicing' on us. I have a large number of clients who are already past their old year end date, having extended to 14, 15, 16 month years and can do nothing about it as far as reporting goes. Please give us more regular updates on when this change will go live as the clock is ticking.

  • Sudipta Kumar commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,

    We have changed our accounting period and so would like to know when the new feature will be available so that reports can be generated based on the new accounting period without messing up the old accounting period.

    Thanks

  • Ray CLARKE commented  ·   ·  Report

    Is there any update on this? I have been told "Soon" for months now.
    We are now 5 weeks away from the start of Basis Reform.

  • Carla Atack commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,

    This feature will be great, but how soon is soon? Will it be available in the next few weeks?

    Thanks so much

  • Jaine Wills commented  ·   ·  Report

    One of my clients recently changed their accounting period, and it would have been really useful to see the last filed accounts as the "previous" period rather than a period based on the new accounting period.