What is the quarterly report called after fourth quarter?

Question

First of all, I apologize for such a minor question. I am not sure if this is a suitable platform for this. I am responsible for submitting quarterly reports for a project. I am doing this since last year. I had submitted fourth quarterly report few months back. Its time of the year when I have to submit another report. I am unsure about what should I name this report as. Is this fifth quarterly report? Or is this first quarterly report for the second year of the project. Could you please guide me on this ?

Answer 1

Not taking into account the different formats for each option I think we can discuss just this two:

• YYYY-Qx (with x in 1 .. 4)
• Project Z - Qx (where x can be bigger than 4)

In my research each organization use any of them. E.g:

• "The fifth quarter period to end March 2008 was primarily concerned [...]"
• "There were no new staff hires planned during the fifth quarter"
• "Fifth Quarterly Report on Connecticut’s 2009 [...]"
• "Q3 2014 compared to Q3 2013"

Regarding to the question, I think the best option will be keep coherence with your previous reports. Since at date (July) you've send four reports and need to send the fifth I assume you used:

1. Project X - Q1 (sent on July '14)
2. Project X - Q2 (sent on October '14)
3. Project X - Q3 (sent on January '15)
4. Project X - Q4 (sent on April '15)

So in this case the best option could be Project X - Q5, since your Q's doesn't relate to a calendar year.

Answer 2

A Year Always Has Four Quarters

A year only has four quarters, whether it's a calendar year, a fiscal year, or whatever. The fourth quarter of last year might be called "2014-Q4", so the following quarter would be "2015-Q1". The actual naming convention of your documents might differ, but the quarter after the fourth quarter of a year is always the first quarter of a new year.

You should check within your company for the right way to name your documents, and how to specify the year and quarter to align with company standards. I can't imagine a valid use case for identifying quarters without associating them with a year, except maybe to say something like "project X will take 20 quarters to complete", but stranger things have happened. Your mileage may vary.