Video |

Tableau | Data prep

Fiscal dates in Tableau Prep Builder

A really nice quality of life improvement: fiscal dates in Tableau Prep without any date offsetting.

Tim Ngwena •17 September 2020 •1 min read •5 min watch •4.5K

Part ofTableau Prep Builder tutorial Jan-2020

Watch on YouTube

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

0:00Hey, it's Tim here. And in today's video, I

0:02want to show you a nice new feature in

0:04Tableau

0:04Prep, which allows you to set up fiscal

0:06dates very easily just using the standard

0:08interface.

0:09Okay, I'm going to open up Superstore, the

0:11sample workflow here on the bottom left.

0:13And

0:13if you're familiar with Superstore Sales,

0:15if you're a Tableau user, you'll be very

0:16familiar

0:16with the data set. Essentially, there are

0:18four inputs here from different areas, they

0:21get brought together, and they basically

0:22come through into this particular section

0:24where

0:25we actually have all our data in one step.

0:27Now, if I go ahead and click on that step,

0:30Tableau will open up the data pane here,

0:33that gives me a summary of my data, as well

0:35as

0:35a table view of my data. You can see it's

0:37just rendering here on your screen. It's a

0:39little bit slow this morning, I don't know

0:41why. And but it can take a little while,

0:43especially

0:43if it's having to run the flow in the

0:45background. Now, the key feature here is

0:47going to need

0:48us to go to the order date column. And a

0:50little quirk with this feature is that you

0:52're actually

0:52going to want to create a duplicate.

0:54Because if you go ahead and create a fiscal

0:56date on

0:57this column itself, you'll lose your

0:59original order date. And typically, fiscal

1:01dates are

1:02brought in alongside the original date item

1:04that was used to create them. So I'm going

1:07to go ahead and click on these three dots.

1:10Click on duplicate field. And this will

1:13duplicate

1:14the field. Now you're probably wondering,

1:15well, where is it, it doesn't actually

1:16create

1:17it next to this column, it goes all the way

1:19at the very beginning. And you can just see

1:22here on the left hand side that we've got

1:24it right there. Now that we've got it there

1:27,

1:27we can go ahead and use this new feature.

1:29So I'm going to go ahead and click on these

1:30three dots. And I'm going to go to convert

1:33dates. And you'll see at the very bottom,

1:36there's a new feature here that says custom

1:37financial year. Now there's a little bit of

1:39an issue on launch where essentially table

1:41au online doesn't yet support these new

1:43features.

1:44So you'll get this little warning telling

1:46you not to use the feature if you want to

1:47schedule the flight, but we don't need to

1:49do that for this video. So I'll just go

1:50ahead

1:50and click Use features. And the feature

1:53interface pops up. What I need to do is

1:55select the date

1:56option. So essentially, it's asking me

1:58which component of the fiscal year would

2:00you like

2:01to create. And in this case, I just like to

2:04create the month, just to make it easy to

2:06see. And then here I can actually define

2:09when my fiscal year starts. So I don't have

2:11the

2:12level of fidelity to be able to choose the

2:15exact day of the year. And sometimes let's

2:18say if you're working in accounting in the

2:20UK, and the fiscal year might actually

2:22starts

2:22on the fifth of April, because that's

2:24exactly when the tax year ends. But if I

2:26just go ahead

2:27and choose April as an example, and hit

2:29convert dates, it'll actually take all the

2:31dates,

2:32and we'll go through and calculate the

2:34correct fiscal period. So if I click on the

2:36first,

2:37here, what I should see are order dates

2:40that are in April. So you can just see that

2:43that's

2:43worked really, really well just here in the

2:45order date column where I'm clicking, you

2:47can see that the order dates here for the

2:49selection I previously made, what I have to

2:51actually do is keep that selection sort of

2:54fired up, because when I deselected it, it

2:56didn't didn't appear. So if I just keep

2:58that one selected there, and just highlight

3:00your

3:00attention here, in the order date column

3:02where I'm moving my mouse, then you can see

3:04that

3:05this is actually only showing dates in

3:06April. So the features worked, and it's

3:08really, really

3:09nice. Now, if you want to create the year,

3:11you can of course do that as well. You can

3:14just click on order date here on the bottom

3:15, this will bring that into focus up top.

3:17And

3:17then if we go ahead and click on the order

3:20date column here, and again, we go to

3:22convert

3:22dates, custom financial year, I want the

3:26year number this time, and then I want to

3:28make

3:28sure this is April, I can hit convert dates

3:31, and we're good to go. Now, the nice thing

3:34here is if you've got maybe two

3:35organizations, maybe you've got a parent

3:38organization, and

3:39a smaller subsidiary that have different

3:41fiscal years, you can actually create those

3:43fiscal

3:43year columns in the same data set, and then

3:45just give the user the ability to switch

3:47between

3:48them in something like Tableau desktop.

3:50Okay, so it's a really, really nice feature

3:52to be

3:52able to do. And now you'll see I actually

3:55made a mistake there myself, what I did is

3:57actually converted the order date column

3:59myself into the years directly. So I

4:01actually lost

4:02the fidelity of the order date. If you want

4:04to get that back, that's super easy, just

4:06open up the left hand side pane, go down to

4:09the last step, which is converted the dates

4:11to years, and there's just delete that

4:13final step, and then you're back to where

4:15you were

4:16before, then you can go ahead and duplicate

4:18the order date field and this time actually

4:20do it correctly. So I'll go ahead and do

4:23that now. Click on the three dots can I

4:26need to

4:26first duplicate this is going to catch a

4:28lot of people out I think but first

4:30duplicate,

4:31then go back to the left. And once that's

4:36done, we can convert this to the year

4:40number,

4:40we can do this actually right here. And but

4:42if you want the custom financial year, you

4:45can go ahead and choose April, then choose

4:48the year there and then convert date. Prior

4:52to this feature, what you had to do is do

4:54some sort of date offsetting. So you'd

4:55shift

4:56the dates forward or back by the number of

4:58months that you offset compared to the

4:59calendar

5:00year. And then that would get your dates

5:02sort of in the right in the right realm,

5:03then you'd

5:04just go ahead and use the standard sort of

5:06features that are available. But that's the

5:08feature in a nutshell. It's pretty very

5:10simple, really nice quality of life

5:11improvement when

5:12you're handling dates inside a tablet prep.

5:14And it makes it much, much easier to work

5:16with. Thanks for watching this video. You

5:18know what to do if you liked the video. If

5:20you don't leave a comment below. Let me

5:21know what you'd like to see in the future.

5:23[BLANK_AUDIO]

Rollup

Tableau Prep Builder now has a built-in custom financial year feature, so you can create fiscal month or fiscal year fields directly from a date column without manually offsetting dates.

Demonstrated on the Superstore sample workflow, using the order date field once all input tables are joined into a single data step.

The Breakdown

Duplicate the date field first 0:48

Before converting anything, duplicate your date column via the three dots menu. Converting the original column directly overwrites it and you lose the underlying date, which typically needs to stay alongside the fiscal version.
Find the duplicated field 1:02

The duplicate doesn't appear next to the original column — it gets added at the very start of your field list, so look there if you can't find it.
Open Convert Dates on the duplicate 1:29

Click the three dots on the duplicated field and go to Convert Dates. Custom Financial Year sits at the bottom of that menu as the new option.
Choose fiscal month or fiscal year 2:01

Pick which component you want to generate — fiscal month or fiscal year number — then set the month your fiscal year begins. You don't get day-level precision, only month granularity, so you can't match something like a UK tax year starting on a specific day.
Convert and verify the result 2:20

Hitting Convert Dates recalculates the fiscal period across all rows. You can spot-check it by filtering to a fiscal period and confirming the original order dates fall in the expected calendar month.
Repeat for a second component if needed 3:10

Run the same duplicate-then-convert process again if you want both a fiscal month and a fiscal year field, or fiscal columns for multiple organisations with different fiscal calendars in the same dataset — useful when you want users to switch between them in Tableau Desktop.
Undo a mistake by deleting the step 3:53

If you convert the original date column by mistake and lose the underlying date, just open the flow steps on the left, find the conversion step, and delete it to get back to where you started — then redo it correctly by duplicating first.
How this replaces manual date offsetting 4:40

Previously, handling fiscal years meant manually shifting dates forward or back by the offset month count to align them with the calendar year before using standard date features. This feature removes that workaround entirely.

Worth Knowing

Tableau Online doesn't yet support this feature at launch, so scheduling a flow that uses it triggers a warning
Forgetting to duplicate the date field before converting is an easy mistake — it silently destroys your original date column
Fiscal date creation is only precise to the month, not the exact day, so it won't match fiscal years that start mid-month

Use It When

Reach for this whenever you need fiscal reporting periods in your data and previously would have hand-built an offset calculation — especially if different parts of the business run on different fiscal calendars.

How this Rollup was made provenance & method

A Rollup is drafted by AI from the video's transcript, then reviewed and edited by Tim. Everything used to produce this one is listed below — the model, the exact prompt, and the source video — so the process is transparent and reproducible.

Transcription: On-device — NVIDIA Parakeet v3 for recent videos, OpenAI Whisper large-v3 for earlier ones. The transcript never leaves the machine or gets published.
Drafting: Claude Sonnet 5 in the cloud, from that transcript.
Prompt: The exact Rollup prompt (v2) — the full system prompt, unedited.
Source video: Watch on YouTube
Drafted: 5 July 2026 at 09:38
Reviewed & edited: 5 July 2026 at 09:41 · by Tim Ngwena

Model + prompt + video is everything you'd need to recreate a Rollup like this yourself. The one thing we don't share is the transcript.

Rights. The video and its transcript are the property of TN Media Ltd. Unauthorised use or download is prohibited. © TN Media Ltd.