dependent fiscal year represents april to march or from 
september to august.generally two years are involved in 
dependent fiscal year.

for eg:april 2008 to march 2009

       september 2008 to august 2009.

default is dependent fiscal year in sap.

INDEPENDENT fiscal year is usually from JAN - DEC.generally 
one year is involved in this type.ITS ALSO CALLED CALENDAR 
FISCAL YEAR.

there is one more fiscal year which is shortend fiscal year.
its usually for less then 12months.this fiscal is used for 
a newly formed company..

Hi,
In IMG go to financial accounting global setting then go to
fiscal year variant and set the fiscal year variant on year
dependent year and follow the following procedure:

1.  enter name of month started from may and end on april
2.  enter the number of days in a month you want to close
for example in may number of days is 28 instead of 31 
3.  enter period from 01 to 12 started from may to april
4.  enter -1 against the month from jan to april

For Example :

  Month       Number of Days       Period        Year Shift
  May08          28                01                 0
  June           35                02                 0
  July           28                03                 0
  Aug            28                04                 0
  Sep            35                05                 0
  Oct            28                06                 0
  Nov            28                07                 0
  Dec            35                08                 0
  Jan09          28                09                -1
  Feb            28                10                -1
  Mar            35                11                -1
  Apr            31                12                -1 

Year Independent: the financial year is different from
calendar year Starting from 1st April to 31st March (where
the posting period months are not equal to calendar year months)

For Example :

  Month       Number of Days       Period        Year Shift
  Jan09          31                10               -1
  Feb            29                11               -1
  Mar            31                12               -1
  April08        30                01                0
  May            31                02                0
  Jun            30                03                0
  July           31                04                0
  Aug            30                05                0
  Sep            31                06                0
  Oct            30                07                0
  Nov            31                08                0
  Dec            30                09                0

Hope this would definitely help you out.
Thank you.

can you guys clarify why we use -1 for jan09 and 0 for 
apr08 in year shift whereas the logical conclusion from the 
definition of year shift should be +1 for jan09 and 0 for 
apr08

If the fiscal year is later than the calendar year, +1.
If the fiscal year is before calendar year, -1.