How to change printscale quarterly so Q1 starts on a February rather than January ?

Question

we plan to quarters but those quarters are not based on the gregorian calendar.

They are based on when our fiscal year starts.

For us, thats always February so being able to set the date that the quarter starts on would allow us to enter actual dates rather than offset them so it shows correctly in the Gantt but then doesnt match the real dates.

Alternatively being able to set Starts at as a quarter e.g. "Starts At 2026Q2 and lasts one quarter" would be useful.

Is there a syntax where either of these already work or they would be feature requests ?

Thanks in advance

Comments

Hello T.,

That will be a wanted feature request!

Similar to the Weekly request here:

• https://forum.plantuml.net/17852/custom-financial-weeks-in-gantt-chart
• Request - Gantt: Weekscale with weeknumbers? · Issue #525 · plantuml/plantuml

But for Quater.

Regards,
Th.

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Looks like the week one was fixed in June 2025.  This one is slightly different as rarhet than changing the scale, just want it to shift the dates represented.  

At quarter level, currently a task with start date of 2-Feb-26 lasting 13 weeks will start a month into q1 and will overrun a month into q2.

With year starting on 2-Feb the same task starting 2-Feb-26 for 13 weeks , would fill q1.

Think it's just the offet at start of project that needs fixing since all others would be 13 weeks from that start date.

Answer 1

At this time, **printscale** does not have a secret syntax for that. Since the gregorian calendar is hardwired to quarters, Q1 equals January–March, end of story. Fiscal calendars beginning in February are not supported natively.

As you said, offsetting dates or replacing your tasks with explicit start/end dates in place of quarter tokens are the only workarounds that I've encountered. However, it disrupts the "real" date alignment and quickly causes chaos on the Gantt chart.

The clear answer would be to attach "starts at 2026Q2" to a bespoke fiscal start, but that isn't done. Consequently, this is definitely a feature request.

You're not alone if your organization operates on a fiscal year that extends from February to January. Configurable quarter anchors in printscale are something I would advocate for since they make much more sense than putting everything via Gregorian logic.