For Accounting purposes: Does the first week of may 2013 start on May 5, May 1, April 28, April 29, or some other day?

Typically each company would have a fiscal calendar that defines the start and end of each fiscal period. There could be more or less than 12 periods in a year, and they could start and end just about any time.

With that said, if there is nothing to the contrary, a normal fiscal year would have 12 periods,  with a typical fiscal calendar that starts on the 1st day of the month and ends on the last day.

I have a knack for making stuff complicated. I should have phrased the question like this: "As commonly understood, does the first week of a month start on the sunday of that month, the second week on the second sunday, third week on third sunday, etc?"

So in the case of may 2013, we would have: week 1 = 5-12, week2 = 12-19, week 3 = 19-26, week 4 = 26- june 1. This would also mean that sunday april 28 to  sat. May 4'th would be considered the fourth week of april.

 I like this method because you can compare identical length time periods. We can compare whatever data for the 4'th week of may (may 26- june 1) with the 4'th week of april (apr 28 - may 4).

But what I gather from the answers so far is that it is subjective.  That sounds right. I just found another discussion of this at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/604031/what-is-the-first-last-week-of-a-month and they also said that it was subjective; that there is no common understanding or definitive answer.

Ironically, I did find the phrase "during the first week of march" in the fasb.org website but no standard indicating the exact date range of the first week in march!

carlmd: I appreciate the information.  I guess the only way to do this right when someone says the 'X week of the month' is to spell out the date periods. What prompted this whole question is that I do have a report to do which asks for the data for the X week of the month.

You say typically, but that doesn't mean always....

IMHO the first week of the month is the first seven days, unless you are not on a calendar fiscal year and have defined the periods otherwise. In that case it would be the first seven days as defined in  a given period.

Well,  so far what I'm going to take away from all this is that next time someone says X week of the month I'm going to demand a date range!  In fact, I just submitted a crystal report to a client with a chart that spelled out the date range though the requirements were for week 1, week 2...  In reference to that, you may see a question on the crystal reports forum asking how to order the x axis labels of a chart.

I would still be interested in a few further comments though, before I can put this question to bed and worry about some other earth-shaking issue!

Hi, does not look as if you have attracted further comments

-- can this question be put to bed now?

A problem is that the question asks about "first week of a month" and "for accounting purposes". I'm not aware of any 'accounting' definitions of weeks per month. Rather the meaningful definitions are only for weeks per year.

In some 40+ years working in businesses (large and small, public and private), this is the first time I've ever seen anyone care about a monthly basis, except on an informal basis, e.g., "Somewhere in the first week of April...". I suspect most people would simply assume that means "...in the first few working days..." with no absolute certainty. I'm not at all sure there is any good answer outside of a specific organization's standards, if any exist at all.

Tom

Sorry it took me so long to close this question.