Note: for information about Walmart’s fiscal year, go to Walmart Fiscal Year Calendar.
Walmart suppliers get another New Year’s Eve next Friday, January 31st, when Fiscal Year 2014 ends.
That might seem a bit early for the end of 2014, but the Walmart calendar is special. If you’re looking for the ordinary calendar year 2013, you’ll need to look at Fiscal Year 2014.
February 1, 2014, begins Walmart’s new fiscal year (FY 2015), so it’s time for year-end reporting for 2013 (FY 2014). But this is a special year — FY 2014 runs February 2013 through January 2014, but it actually began on January 26th, 2013. This means that Fiscal Year 2014 has 53 weeks rather than the usual 52.
This is the Walmart way of correcting for the fact that earth years aren’t exactly 52 weeks long — it’s the equivalent of a leap year in the standard solar calendar.
What does that mean for your reporting?
First, you will only be able to run the full fiscal year 2014 for your Supplier Scorecard during Week 1. Run your scorecard during the week of February 1st, 2014, and you will see the full year over year information:
- Fiscal Year 2014 (February 2013 – January 2014) will show in the “This Year” column.
- Fiscal Year 2013 (February 2012 – January 2013) will show in the “Last Year” columns.
Schedule these queries for Week 1.
If you want year on year scorecards for 2014 and 2013, you’ll have nine weeks to run them, beginning February 1.
- Fiscal Year 2014 (February 2013 – January 2014) will show in the By Fuzzy Dates selection, “Last Year Totals.” That’s Walmart Week 1 through Walmart Week 53: January 26, 2013 – January 31, 2014.
- Fiscal Year 2013 (February 2012 – January 2013) will show in By Fuzzy Dates selection, “Year Before Last Totals”. That’s Walmart Week 1 through Walmart Week 52: January 28, 2012 – January 25, 2013.
Each week, one week is added and the earliest week drops off the report. That means that by Week 2, you’ll be seeing 52 weeks for both last year (FY 2013) and this year (by that time, FY2015). Only in the first week of February can you see all 53 weeks of Fiscal Year 2013 totaled .
If you bear this in mind, you should have no problems. If you’re a fairly new Walmart supplier, though, and you weren’t around for the last 53-week year, you might be confused when you find that your other data sources don’t mesh with Retail Link end of year reports. Just remember that you’re comparing a 53-week Walmart year with a 52-week Walmart year.
A couple of tips to help you navigate this:
- There will probably be extra traffic through Retail Link for the next week or two, so plan accordingly.
- Any queries that are not picked up after one week will be gone — this is not the week to procrastinate.
