In today’s fast-paced business world, accurate reporting based on calendar periods isn’t just nice to have—it’s essential. Whether you’re aligning reports with a fiscal year, planning sales campaigns, or tracking operational performance, the right calendar structure significantly impacts decision-making. Connectorly understands these complexities and offers straightforward solutions for effectively managing calendar-based reporting with your Xero or HubSpot data.
Why Do Different Calendar Types Matter?
Businesses often operate on varying calendar schedules. Some follow the standard calendar year (January to December), others operate on fiscal years that differ from the calendar year, and many require custom reporting periods such as quarterly, monthly, or even weekly cycles. For financial accuracy, operational clarity, and strategic insight, your reporting needs must reflect your actual business cycles. Misaligned calendars can lead to inaccuracies, missed insights, and poor strategic decisions.
Common Challenges with Calendar Reporting
Reporting across platforms like Xero and HubSpot can quickly become complex when their default date handling doesn’t match your business needs. For instance, financial teams often face issues reconciling monthly performance if Xero’s default reporting doesn’t align precisely with their fiscal month-ends. Similarly, marketing teams using HubSpot often struggle to measure campaign performance accurately if date ranges aren’t customisable to campaign periods.
These discrepancies cause headaches and inaccuracies, making it difficult to produce reliable, actionable insights. Without effective tools, your team spends valuable time manually adjusting reports, increasing the risk of human error and inefficiency.
How Connectorly Simplifies Calendar Reporting
Connectorly is designed specifically to address the challenges of calendar alignment, regardless of your data source. By integrating seamlessly with platforms such as Xero and HubSpot, Connectorly lets you effortlessly adjust and customise your reporting periods directly within Power BI.
Connectorly offers three primary calendar options to ensure accurate alignment:
In the ‘normal’ Gregorian Calendar; years start on January 1st and finish on December 31st.
The Fiscal calendar is the most commonly used calendar used for financial reporting and uses the fiscal year from your Xero organisation. If the case of multiple grouped Xero organisations, the primary Organisation’s fiscal year is used.
The ISO Year calendar splits months into full weeks, following a 4-4-5 week pattern, so ‘January’ has four weeks (28 days), ‘February’ has four weeks and ‘March’ has five (35 days).
Weeks (and hence Months and Years) always start on a Monday and end on a Sunday.
Years usually have 364 days (52 weeks). In order to catch up with reality(!) every now and then an extra week is added, in which case January has 5 weeks.
Real-World Use Case: Financial and Marketing Alignment
Consider a scenario where your financial team works with Xero, reporting on a fiscal year running from April to March, while your marketing team measures HubSpot campaigns quarterly, starting in January. Connectorly empowers both teams to customise their Power BI dashboards to accurately reflect these different reporting calendars within the same environment.
Financial controllers see accurate fiscal data without manual corrections, improving compliance and accuracy. Marketers, meanwhile, effortlessly visualise campaign performance quarter by quarter, enhancing strategic planning and execution.
Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Your Calendar Reporting
The Date table in your Connectorly (Xero/HubSpot) data model already includes all the key information you need for reporting. Simply choose the appropriate field to structure your report the way you want.
For detailed instructions on configuring dates with your Xero data specifically, see our in-depth article on The Connectorly Xero Data Model.
Enhanced Accuracy and Efficiency with Connectorly
Accurate calendar reporting is not merely technical—it significantly influences strategic clarity and operational efficiency. Connectorly simplifies this crucial aspect of your reporting workflow, eliminating frustration and inaccuracies associated with calendar discrepancies.
By providing seamless integration and intuitive date handling across platforms like Xero and HubSpot, Connectorly allows your teams to focus on insightful analysis rather than manual data manipulation. Embrace the clarity and precision that comes from customised, accurate calendar reporting with Connectorly.
