Overview
By default, Office Timeline calculates the timeline scale based on the calendar year (January-December). If your organization’s fiscal year (FY) starts on a different month than January, you can easily configure the add-in to show your custom FY on the timescale. Here’s how:
Steps
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From your timeline slide in PowerPoint, select the timescale to open its customization options in the Style Pane.
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From the Style Pane, click the Timescale Settings button. Move to the Settings tab in the window that pops up, and you'll see Fiscal Year options on the right side.
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Select the desired Start month for the fiscal year, and the timeline scale will automatically be updated to reflect the change. On our timeline, we set the fiscal year to start in March, and this is how the timescale changed as a result:
E.g.: The “Study Kick-off” milestone, which originally belonged to Q2 2020, is now displayed as part of Q1 2020 to reflect our fiscal year.
Note: The Fiscal Year setting affects only the timescale – it will not change any task dates or milestone dates.
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Use the first checkbox below the Start month selector to choose whether you want to show or hide the “FY” labels on the timeline. Finally, if you wish to label your fiscal year based on the calendar year it ends in rather than when it starts, uncheck the second checkbox (Use starting year for FY numbering).
Quick tip:
If you wish to use the same Fiscal Year preferences for all the new timelines you create, you can set them as the default from the general Settings window accessible from the Office Timeline ribbon: