​In 2023, HELLA's fiscal year will be changed to the calendar year. Why is the changeover taking place and what is involved? A look behind the scenes.

_{Thursday 2022-10-13}

Why does the HELLA fiscal year run from June to May? Many have asked themselves this question. For most companies, the fiscal year coincides with the calendar year, as is the case at Faurecia. Why things are different at HELLA is no longer comprehensible in detail today. As part of the closer cooperation with Faurecia, there is now an alignment. Two different fiscal year histories would have meant a considerable amount of additional work because figures would have had to be collected twice and additional reports would have had to be prepared. For this reason, a resolution was passed at an Extraordinary General Meeting at the end of April 2022 to change HELLA's fiscal year to the calendar year from 2023.

Large project team involved

A large project team of employees from the IT, Finance and Controlling, and Legal and Tax departments is already working on the changeover. "Numerous divisions and companies worldwide are affected by the changeover," reports Sebastian Schubert, who as Project Director is responsible for the IT stream of the fiscal year changeover project. "This is a big challenge. For example, right at the beginning of the project we had around 2000 data warehouse reports that first had to be analyzed. Subsequently, the affected reports had to be gradually converted by the end of the year."

Simona Micut, a Financial Processes Specialist, coordinates the tests for the fiscal year changeover from Giarmata in Romania. "I am responsible for explaining to the companies and departments involved in the transition exactly what steps are needed and when, and how we will take them. The project is very complex, but also very interesting. I'm learning a lot of new things. For example, I create finance test cases to verify that the converted systems are working as intended. Routine doesn't exist, each day brings new challenges depending on what phase of the project we're in."

Conversion in three project phases

The fiscal year changeover project is structured in three phases. "During the first phase, we converted four smaller systems and then carried out tests with key users from the companies to see whether the systems were running without complications," says Irina Elena Miulescu, who is project manager on the IT side of the conversion. "The first productive systems went live at the beginning of August. During the second phase, not only were more major systems converted by mid-September, but improvements that emerged after the first project phase were also implemented. In the third and final phase, which began in September, particularly complex systems such as the S4 system will be converted. We are only aligning these complex systems at the end so we can implement what we learned in the first phases."

Cosmin Gheorghe Feraru is a Financial Investment Consultant in Craiova and is responsible for replacing the old fiscal year variants in the systems with the new variant. "I am responsible for changing the settings in the systems as part of the project. This requires different technical steps, depending on whether the systems are those of the data and business warehouse, the finance, controlling or audit department. I create the new fiscal year variant in the system and assign it to the different companies. We have more than 70 companies in the HELLA network, so there's a lot to do, but so far everything has gone through without any major complications."

"A fiscal year change rarely happens," says Sebastian Schubert. "Thus, there are no established standard use cases for this one either. This makes the performance of the team all the greater to be appreciated. I would therefore like to thank all those involved for their commitment and dedication.