Date: calendar and business day
Period: fiscal week, month, quarter, year
Rule: 4-4-5, close, leap week
Status: open, preliminary, closed
Compare: aligned week and period
A timestamp cannot represent every business clock
Orders happen on calendar dates, stores report by trading day, and finance recognizes results in closing periods. Generic month functions place the same activity into incompatible windows.
Map each date to business day and governed fiscal periods, while declaring which calendar each metric uses.
Encode 4-4-5 rather than approximating it
A 4-4-5 calendar is made of whole weeks and occasionally includes a 53rd week. Store the week start, period sequence, leap-week treatment, and effective version.
Do not alias a fiscal month to a calendar month or generate future periods with a fixed number of days.
Separate event time from attribution date
Overnight trading, time zones, late postings, and returns can move an event to another reporting day. Preserve raw time, normalized time, and attributed business date.
Post-close adjustments need both adjustment period and original period so published history is not silently rewritten.
Make comparison windows visible
Same date last year, same fiscal week, and same number of trading days are different comparisons. Holidays and leap weeks make the distinction material.
Return the current and comparison windows with completeness status, and define a metric-specific default.
Accept on calendar boundaries
Test year end, close day, overnight stores, leap year, week 53, and late facts, then reconcile daily, weekly, and monthly totals.
BuildTable may be evaluated for calendar and metric semantics; generation, close states, history, and adjustments require project confirmation.
Public references
Build an AI-ready data foundation
Contact us to discuss your data modeling scenario and access BuildTable Desktop.
Contact us