4/4/5 Quarters in QuickBooks - How do you set fiscal months?

We use QB for our restaurants as well. We have 4/5/4 quarters and I can tell you that QB does not do this. We have to manually adjust the dates for each period. It's a big PITA to compare TY to LY. You end up dumping multiple reports into excel.

(We use the Enterprise version)

Normally I answer QuickBooks questions with "Yes! And here's how."
This is a sad exception. I know of no way to create custom date columns for a P&L, for example.

The easiest workaround that I would suggest is:

(1) Run your Q1 Profit & Loss. Click Customize Report, Advanced, and in the Display Rows area on the left, select All.
(2) Export to Excel.
(3) Repeat the above 2 steps for the other quarters.
(4) Paste each quarter next to each other and you're done.

With a speedy computer this shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.

It's important to select "All" for Display Rows because if you use an income, COGS or Expense account in Q2 that you didn't use during Q1, then when you copy & paste the accounts won't line up, and this adds needless hassle.

I too used QuickBooks for my business. I concur with Jaime and Randy. There's no way to create non-calendar quarters in QuickBooks. The need for a 4-4-5 or 4-5-4 quarter is also common in retail. To do this, you must upgrade to a more robust accounting package but the cost is likely to be significantly different from Quickbooks. You should investigate Intacct, FinancialForce or NetSuite.

Thank you to all who responded.

Anon
Just as an add on:
Most restaurants are managed on a weekly basis, so that you can compare consistent periods, including same period prior year. Trending on a 7 day week cycle is helpful compared to months of 28/29, 30 and 31 days.

Check your point of sale software-that would likely give you weekly financials (but may not include costs not tracked thru QB).

There is no exact functionality for this problem of yours.
You will have to select the dates of the tracked items and then copy the data to an excel sheet.
And you will have to do that for all the quarters.
This is the only workaround I know of.

I hope this helps!