Period zero accounting entries are created by CU’s PeopleSoft financial system with annual processing known as rollforward. Period zero accounting entries are balances as of the beginning of the fiscal year – the net of the previous accounting activity. Multi-year projects typically get period zero entries. General Fund programs typically do not. Most m-Fin reports simply fetch all the data for the FY and sum it. If there are period zero entries this summing yields project-to-date balances instead of FY-to-date balances. There is no special branch of logic in the m-Fin reports for project-to-date – it’s just whether the period zero data exists.

How To Determine If There Is Period Zero Data

For many m-Fin users the default behavior of the reports is fine. The reports automatically do what is expected without requiring the user to understand period zero or even be aware of it. If, however, you are specifically interested in period zero data, here are some helpful tips:

• Some reports, such as m-Fin ACCOUNT NUMBER, automatically provide an FY column if it is needed, so differences between FY-to-date and project-to-date are apparent.
• If there is a CURRENT prompt, you can
  1. Set the CURRENT prompt to 1 — JUL. Then if the to-date column does not match the current column, it is period zero data causing the difference.
  2. Set both the CURRENT and the ACCOUNTING PERIOD prompts to period zero. This gets nothing but period zero data.