Zoined has dozens of time periods available out of the box, some visible in the report creation, and filter panels, and even more as hidden in the settings.
If none of the existing ones fit your needs, you can now create a custom one from settings-> custom time periods-> add custom time period.
Begin with giving your time period a name in all languages your company uses
Then you need to select time period start parameters:
The calculation can start from today, tomorrow or yesterday
The amount of days/weeks/months/quarters/tertiles/years has to be a whole number
Does your time period start from past of future date
Does your time period start the first/same/last day of the period (week/month/quarter/tertile/year) then the starting point (normally Today)
Make the similar selections for the time period end
Preview what date range your current selections give. (The exact date range of the finished report is of course always shifting forwards as the time goes by, as this is a dynamic time range)
In case of a fixed date-to-date range, you can set those up as always from the report creation/filtering panels
Once you are happy with the date previews, you have to add comparisons. The system will automatically add two comparisons: Previous comparable period and previous year corresponsing period.
-> In cases of "Full X weeks" and "full x months" types of time periods, the previous comparable period might need adjusting if your day/week/month/year count is more than 1-> normally that period would start as many days/weeks/month etc. before the period start date, as is the lenght of the time period. So in the example of full six weeks time periods, the previous comparable period would normally start six weeks before the beginnig of the actual time period.
In cases of month to-date and year-to-date type of periods, the comparisons tend to be quite accurate to begin with.
Once you are happy with your somparison periods, you can save the time period. It will appear to the list of available time periods in 1-2 minutes, after a browser refresh.
You can edit, rename, copy or delete your time periods from settings-> Custom time periods-> edit, copy and delete buttons.
If you want to make your custom time period more visible in the new report and filter panel time period drop down menus, you can go to settings-> Settings -> configuration-> time period configuration and drag and drop the custom time period on top of the list of available time periods:
Here is a How-to-video with some examples of different types of custom time periods:
Please do not hesitate to send us feedback and questions about this feature to support@zoined.com