Companies start their fiscal years at different points in the year and name the years differently.

Some companies name their quarters based on the calendar year that the fiscal year starts in, some do it based on when fiscal year ends.

It probably matters to people in finance, but I'm not sure it matters to anyone else.

Mostly it matters to the company itself. Atleast in some countries, taxable income and deferrals are calcualted on the fiscal year rollover as well as forcing full summaries and yearly reports to annual shareholder meetings.

Companies break their fiscal years into quarters in different ways. Best I can tell they do this because there's an incentive to be offset from your customer's fiscal quarters. Being offset means each one of your quarters you get a chance to sell into the budgets for two of their quarters. Which gives you more "at bats" each quarter to make a potential sale.

I'm not totally sure if this actually makes sense and is net positive for the business. But this is the reasoning I've heard from sales people for wanting to offset quarter schedules.

Typically as a company you can choose your fiscal year, it does not need to align with the calendar year.

Fiscal year.

> A fiscal year is a one-year period that companies and governments use for financial reporting and budgeting. A fiscal year is most commonly used for accounting purposes to prepare financial statements. Although a fiscal year can start on Jan. 1 and end on Dec. 31, not all fiscal years correspond with the calendar year. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiscalyear.asp

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year

They are the same quarters, as per the article -> "Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended March 31, 2023,"

Microsoft is just using a different year definition.

Not everyone goes public at the same time, and have different financial reporting periods.

Some companies start counting from January, others from July

And then there is Apple, that starts from September 25th. :)

It takes courage.

And their next one will start on 1 October. Their FY runs to the last Saturday of September. This year, that means 30 September and last year was 24 September. They have either a 52-week or 53-week fiscal year.

I have always assumed this was some nonsense about strategically being distant from other companies in the segment. Cisco for example starts their FY first in August, so kind of random vs the calendar year.

same time frame, their fiscal years just start at different times, so one's Q1 is the other's Q3

I think company can chose their fiscal year dates, in this case MS fiscal year started somewhere in the end of summer 22.

Microsoft's fiscal year is split on the calendar. Their fiscal goes from July 1 - June 30. IOW, it's currently in FY'23... FY'24 starts July 1, 2023.

The main reasons companies will shift their fiscal calendar from the actual calendar year is for tax and cash flow implications.

A lot of sales and cash flow events are seasonal in nature. Sales for a company may slow down during the summer and may pick up in the winter.

For example, a school year tends to run Sep - May, so any business that services the academic industry would probably also want to set their fiscal calendar to July thru June, so that sales, cash flow and income aligns with the actual sales cycle, rather than split their income statement across two academic years if they went with Jan thru December.

Just one of many examples. Another company might make most of their sales towards the end of the year but since customers buy on credit they might not receive the cash flow until Jan, Feb, or March (under a net 90 invoicing scheme). So they may choose to then have Jan-Mar be their Q4 so they can collect on that revenue to influence their EOY balance sheet, and to give them more of a buffer to cover EOY taxes.

Choosing the financial year to end halfway the calendar year is actually a way to save money. This is because the annual report is the most work and since accountants are very busy at the start of the calendar year.