Quarter (unit)

A quarter (from the German quartal < lat. Quārtā - quarter, fourth part) - a unit of time equal to three months , ½ half year or ¼ year .

Quarters of the year have different durations in days. The quarter number in Russia is usually indicated by Roman numerals (I, II, III and IV), and in the United States, using the capital letter Q, the quarter number (Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4).

The unit is used primarily for accounting and economic statistics .

Content

Conventions

According to the All-Russian Classifier of Units of Measurement (OKEI) ^[1] :

Unit Name	OKEY code	National conditional designation	International conditional designation	National code letter designation	International code letter designation
Quarter	364	quart	-	QUART	QAN

Quarter Duration

Quarters can be used to divide the reporting year into 4 parts. For cases when the reporting (business) year coincides with the calendar:

Quarter	Half year	Months	start date	expiration date	Number of calendar days
I	1st	January , February , March	1st of January	March 31	90 (or 91 in leap years )
II	1st	April , May , June	April 1st	30 June	91
III	2nd	July , August , September	July 1	September 30th	92
IV	2nd	October , November , December	October 1st	31th of December	92

In the USSR, in certain sectors of the national economy, the business year did not coincide with the calendar year and began on October 1. Accordingly, the first quarter was the period "October - December", the second - "January - March", etc.

Interesting Facts

Due to the different number of days in months, the number of days in quarters varies from 90 to 92, which is inconvenient for accounting and economic analysis. In a number of stable calendar projects, this problem has been resolved. So, for example, in the Armelin calendar and in the Symmetric calendar , the year is divided into four quarters of exactly 91 days, and in the Gilbourd calendar each of the four quarters consists of 90 days.

Notes

↑ All-Russian classifier of units of measure