Power BI Lesson 7: Time Intelligence for the Indian Financial Year

📎 This article includes 2 downloadable practice files ↓

⏱ 2 min read

📘 Power BI & DAX Beginner Course · Lesson 7 of 10

In this article
  1. Prerequisites
  2. Financial-year-to-date
  3. Last year and growth
  4. FY columns in the Calendar
  5. Where beginners go wrong
  6. Practice

“Sales FYTD vs last year” is the most requested number in Indian businesses, and Power BI’s defaults assume a January-December year. A couple of arguments fix that.

Prerequisites

  • A Calendar table with every date, related to Sales[OrderDate].
  • Marked as date table (Table tools › Mark as date table).
  • Use Calendar columns (FY, Month) in visuals, not Sales[OrderDate].

Financial-year-to-date

Sales FYTD = TOTALYTD ( [Total Sales], Calendar[Date], "31/3" )

The third argument is the year-end date; “31/3” means the year ends on 31 March. (Some locales want “03-31”; if you get odd results, try that.)

Last year and growth

Sales LY      = CALCULATE ( [Total Sales], SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR ( Calendar[Date] ) )
Sales FYTD LY = CALCULATE ( [Sales FYTD], SAMEPERIODLASTYEAR ( Calendar[Date] ) )
YoY Growth %  = DIVIDE ( [Total Sales] - [Sales LY], [Sales LY] )
Sales Prev Month = CALCULATE ( [Total Sales], DATEADD ( Calendar[Date], -1, MONTH ) )

In the practice data, FY 2025-26 sales are lower than FY 2024-25; check your YoY measure against the expected-results workbook.

💡 Put FY on a slicer and Month (sorted by FYMonthNo) on the axis. Months then run April to March, and the YTD line climbs across the year.

FY columns in the Calendar

The practice Calendar already has them. If you build your own in DAX:

FY = "FY " & ( YEAR ( Calendar[Date] ) - ( MONTH ( Calendar[Date] ) < 4 ) ) & "-" &
     RIGHT ( YEAR ( Calendar[Date] ) - ( MONTH ( Calendar[Date] ) < 4 ) + 1, 2 )
FYMonthNo = MOD ( MONTH ( Calendar[Date] ) + 8, 12 ) + 1

Where beginners go wrong

Symptom Cause
YTD resets in January Missing the “31/3” year-end argument
Time functions return blank Calendar not marked, has gaps, or Sales[OrderDate] used on the axis
Months sorted alphabetically Set Sort by column = FYMonthNo
Partial current year compared with a full last year Compare FYTD with FYTD LY

More: time intelligence for the Indian FY.

Practice

Download the data model and expected results below. Load all four tables into Power BI Desktop and build this lesson’s steps; compare your numbers with the expected-results workbook.

📎 Practice files for this article

  • 📗
    Practice data model (Excel)Four tables: Sales (600 orders, FY 2024-25 and 2025-26), Products, Customers and a Calendar with FY columns.
    ⬇ XLSX · 40 KB
  • 📗
    Expected resultsThe values your measures and visuals should show.
    ⬇ XLSX · 7 KB

Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.

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