Accounting Period

An accounting period is usually a statement of what happened financially in the last quarter or year.

Here's what matters: Wall Street reporting, tax status, employee contracts, union contracts, etc. It all needs to be reconciled and reported on a regular basis. Some companies live on a calendar annual basis, i.e. from Jan 1 to Dec 31; others use a June fiscal, i.e. living annually financially, from July 1 to June 30. See the opus video Fiscal versus Calendar Year for gory details.