# Fiscal dates in Tableau Prep Builder

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2020-09-17
- **Format:** Video · 5 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data prep
- **Tools:** Tableau (dateparse, prep)
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/fiscal-dates-in-prep-builder
- **Watch:** https://www.youtu.be/JN7tzIoveQM

I demonstrate the new custom financial year feature in Tableau Prep Builder using the Superstore sample workflow. I show how to duplicate your date field first, then convert it to a fiscal month or year by choosing when your fiscal year starts.

## Key takeaways

- Always duplicate your order date field before creating a fiscal date, otherwise you lose the original date
- The custom financial year option lives under the three dots, Convert Dates, at the bottom of the menu
- You can create either a fiscal month or fiscal year number, and define the month your fiscal year begins
- Tableau Online doesn't yet support these new features on launch, so scheduling a flow with them triggers a warning
- You can build multiple fiscal year columns for different organisations and let users switch between them in Tableau Desktop

## Chapters

- 0:09 Opening the Superstore workflow
- 0:48 Duplicating the order date field
- 1:29 Creating a custom fiscal month
- 3:10 Creating a fiscal year number
- 3:53 Fixing a mistake and the old offset method

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/fiscal-dates-in-prep-builder

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena