Where to store the Fiscal (Tax) Month & Year data

[Evi]

I'm making an Income and Expenses database where the transaction (income or
expenditure) dates need to be sorted by the Fiscal (financial) Year and
month ie the Fiscal Year starts on the 6th of April and ends of the 5th of
April in the next year so 6 April is the 1st month of the Fiscal Year while
5th of April is the 12th month.

I could use Form Coding to either to put the Fiscal year and Fiscal Month
into the Expenses table or else just keep them as calculated fields in a
query (which would be more practical)

Can any of you forsee a circumstance in which not storing the data in a
table could cause future problems?

or Vice Versa.

How would you tackle this?

Evi

 

[Fred]

I noticed nobody answered. A couple thoughts. I think that your calculated
field idea is probably better subject to a few thoughts:

-If the fiscal year and month definitions currently never change.

-If they change in the future you'll need to do something different,
possibly create and populate those fields to avoid your calculation getting
really complicated.

-If, in your case, you have no legal / regulatory / policy requirement for
the enterer to actually post the year an month.

-If, someday, you'll need to hand this off to someone who is not as
proficient as you, having it simply / explicitly stored in the table would
probably be better. But you could do that and the hand-off time is needed.

 

[Evi]

Thanks so much Fred. This really helps.

There are some useful considerations. Yes, I see what you mean. I could use
an update query if it ever becomes necessary to store the values in a table
so for now I can keep my query. This will mean one less thing for the user
to enter - or forget to enter

Evi