What quarter is it?

When you’re working with financial data (forecasts, revenue or sales targets, financials), you are certainly used to working at the annual and monthly level.  And doing so, whether with a spreadsheet or accounting software, is straightforward.  Grouping by quarter, though, is not as simple, at least when working in Excel.  But, as we accounting and finance people learn, it can be the most useful.  Monthly information often represents too small a slice of data to offer any useful insight- at least in its own context.  On the other hand, while annual information gives you a much better feel for what’s going on with the business, it happens too infrequently to allow management or ownership to do anyting about it.

It makes sense, then, to organize and analyze important information by quarter.  After all, there’s a reason big companies report these results to all who are listening. Read more of this post