Credit for the moon

Finance compares March with last March. Marketing compares Ramadan with last Ramadan. Both desks are being honest, and only one of them owns the report that goes upstairs.

The fasting month began on the first this year, so all of it sits inside March, and Eid is expected at the end of the same month, depending on the sighting. Last year it started later, so last March held part of a month and no Eid.

So the March line, when it lands, will be the strongest March this business has recorded, and nobody in marketing did it. Some year soon the same arithmetic runs the other way, and somebody competent will be explaining a decline they did not cause.

The finance desk is not being stubborn. A fixed year is what makes any comparison possible, and it is the year the audit, the board pack and most objectives live in. The marketing desk is not being difficult either: the customer's calendar is the one that moves, and the customer is the point of the exercise.

Which is why it never resolves. It looks like a disagreement about performance and it is a disagreement about which calendar the company believes, never written down anywhere. So it gets made in the moment, by whoever is presenting, in favour of whoever the number flatters.

The cheap move is to say the number before it says you. Put the shape of the month on the table in the first week: this March carries all of it plus the holiday, here is what the calendar contributed, here is the part the team answers for.

A windfall claimed as a result has to be repeated next year. A windfall declared early buys the benefit of the doubt in the year the calendar goes the other way.