Date formats in Sage Intacct

Dates are fundamental to how Sage Intacct displays information to you. This topic will cover the basic date format behaviors, and exceptions to the rule.

Supported date formats

The following date formats are supported.

Date sequence Date format
Day, month, year
  • DD MM YY
  • DD.MM.YY
  • DD/MM/YY
  • DD-MM-YY
Month, day, year
  • MM DD YY
  • MM.DD.YY
  • MM/DD/YY
  • MM-DD-YY
Year, month, day
  • YY MM DD
  • YY.MM.DD
  • YY/MM/DD
  • YY-MM-DD
Day, month, year
  • DD MM YYYY
  • DD.MM.YYYY
  • DD/MM/YYYY
  • DD-MM-YYYY
Month, day, year
  • MM DD YYYY
  • MM.DD.YYYY
  • MM/DD/YYYY
  • MM-DD-YYYY
Year, month, day
  • YYYY MM DD
  • YYYY.MM.DD
  • YYYY/MM/DD
  • YYYY-MM-DD

Your personal date format

You can choose which date format you prefer to see displayed in Intacct by selecting a format on your My preferences page in the General preferences section. The date format that you select is displayed on all pages in Intacct that have a date present, and on any documents you print from Intacct. However, printed document templates can behave differently. For more information, see Printed document templates.

For more information about setting your preferences, see General preferences.

The Company date format

When your company is being created and set up, your administrator can set a date format that's displayed on pages in Intacct and on documents. The date format selected provides a default setting for new user accounts. However, if a user selects a different date format in their personal preferences, the user's personal preferences takes precedence over the company default.

If the company administrator changes the default date setting, it affects only new users accounts, not existing users accounts. This setting can still be overridden by the user's personal preferences.

Entering dates

When you set a date format in your personal preferences, you are setting the display format for all dates within Intacct.

If you enter a date using a different format, Intacct re-formats the date to the one set in your preferences. For example, if you set your date format as mm/dd/yy, then enter Dec 17, 2025 and tab out of the field, Intacct immediately displays the date as 12/17/2025. You can change your date format at any time.

However, there are exceptions to this rule, as noted in Exceptions to standard date formats in Sage Intacct.

Use these keyboard shortcuts to add a date in any date field:

Shortcut keys Description

t

Current date (today's date).

+

Increments the date in the field by one day.

–

Decrements the date in the field by one day.

w

First day of the week for the date entered in the field.
For example, if you enter July 4, 2025 in the field and then tap w, the date changes to July 1, 2025.

k

Last day of the week for the date entered in the field.
For example, if you enter July 4, 2025 in the field and then tap k , the date changes to July 6, 2025.

m

First day of the month for the date entered in the field. (Type m again to go to the first day of the prior month.)

h

Last day of the month for the date entered in the field. (Type h again to go to the last day of the prior month.)

y

First day of the year for the date entered in the field.

r

Last day of the year for the date entered in the field.

Down arrow

Open or close calendar.

Enter

Select.

Esc

Close.

Shortcut tips and examples:

  • Type mmh for prior month end. For example, if you enter July 4, 2025 in the field and then tap mmh, the date changes to June 30, 2025.

  • Type yyr for prior year end. For example, if you enter July 4, 2025 in the field and then tap yyr, the date changes to December 31, 2024.
The following date shortcuts are powerful; they produce results based on the date format chosen by your company:

[n]

'n-th' month, current day and year

/[n]

'n-th' day of the current month and year

//[n]

'n-th' year, current day and month

Examples: Today's date is July 26, 2025. In the following scenarios, you want to enter a date with the same day and year, but change the month to 8 for August (you can change the day or year in a similar fashion):

mm/dd/yyyy

Enter 8 (for August) and tab to the next field. The system populates the date field with 08/26/2025

dd.mm.yyyy

Enter /8 (for August) and tab to the next field. The system populates the date field with 26.08.2025

yyyy-mm-dd

Enter /8 (for August) and tab to the next field. The system populates the date field with 2025-08-26.

Calendar shortcuts: When the calendar is displayed, you can use the following shortcuts to enter dates:

PgUp/PgDn

 

previous/next month

Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn

previous/next year

Ctrl+Home

current month or open when closed

Ctrl+left arrow/right arrow

previous/next day

Ctrl+up arrow/down arrow

previous/next week

Enter

accept the selected date

Ctrl+End

close and erase the date

Esc

close the calendar without selection

Exceptions to standard date formats in Sage Intacct

Below are the most common exceptions to the standard use of date formats.

Single report

If you want a particular date format to show when you print a single report, change your preferences to the format you want. Then print the report and change the date format back again.

Accounts Payable summaries

Intacct standardizes the date format for all automatically created AP summaries on the internationally accepted format of YYYY-MM-DD24:MI:SS. Standardizing the date format in the summary title ensures that transactions are always grouped or matched to the appropriate summary. This eliminates the risk of posting errors due to a date format mismatch.

For more information, see AP summaries.

Bank reconciliations with Auto-match

When performing bank reconciliations using Auto-match or Auto-match with Review, your personal date format preference must be set to MM/DD/YYYY. The Auto-match and Auto-match with Review process only supports MM/DD/YYYY as a date format.

For more information, see Begin reconciling an account.

Import (CSV) files

When you import a CSV file into Intacct, you are given the option to select the date format for the import. When you select a date format here, Intacct tries to import your file using the selected date format. If Intacct can’t import your file with the selected date format, it tries to discover the date format used in your file. Then it imports the data using that date format.

For more information, see Prepare your file for CSV import.

Exchange rates

When entering or editing exchange rate dates, including the From Date, To Date, and Effective start date, you must follow the MM/DD/YYYY format. Intacct does not allow you to enter a date in any other format than MM/DD/YYYY for exchange rates.

For more information, see Exchange rates

Printed document templates

If you use printed document templates, the date format you selected in your personal preferences is not necessarily reflected in your printed document template. Printed document templates allow you to use merge fields that insert different date types, such as the date a PO is due, the date of a transaction, or the start and end dates of a Project.

For more information about printed document templates, see Printed document templates.

Platform Services formula expressions

Platform Services gives you tools for building solutions that can access and work with custom data as well as standard Intacct application data. The Platform allows you to create custom data objects and then create forms, pages, and actions that access those objects.

When creating a formula expression, you use merge fields to extract data from object records and related records. You can place merge fields anywhere in a formula to stand as a placeholder for data. When the formula is executed, the actual field values replace the merge fields. The Dates field is one of the merge fields that you can use when creating formula expressions.

For more information, see Formula expressions and Platform Services.

API functions

When working with dates in the API, the format depends on whether you are using generic or explicit functions. For more information, see the Intacct Developer site.

Advanced Reports

Custom Report Writer, Interactive Custom Report Writer, and Interactive Visual Explorer take on different behaviors for date format preferences.

Depending on which Advanced Reporting application you use, the dates that are input (from prompts or filters) and output (editing and running reports) might be from different sources.

In ICRW and IVE, some of the date formats are from your date format preferences and some are taken from your language preference. For example, if you set your Language preference to English (UK), the dates reflect that locale.

Advanced Reporting application Filters and prompts Editing report Report output List of reports
Custom Report Writer Date format Date format Date format Date format
Interactive Custom Report Writer Date format Language preference Language preference Date format
Interactive Visual Explorer Date format Language preference Language preference Date format

How time relates to dates

Time (24:MI:SS) is logged when a record is both created and updated.

While time is not essential for dates like document date, posting date, or approval date, some transactions are affected by their timestamp:

  • For supply chain management transactions, the time logged for created or updated records affects the order in which the transactions are executed, which in turn affects costing. However, if you run a reconciliation, all purchases for a day are executed before all sales for the same day are executed (to calculate costing).
  • For General Ledger transactions, the transactions are always posted to the accounts on the posting date.

Time is not important in a filter unless it is used for transactions that occurred in a different time zone. For example, if a person in Pacific Standard Time (PST) creates a transaction at 11:59 PM PST on 3/30, and that transaction needs to be included in a report that's run by someone in Easter Standard Time EST, the time of the transaction will affect whether or not it is included in the report.