Quick Answer: A quarter is 3 months. Your business year breaks into four quarters of three months each: Q1 (January-March), Q2 (April-June), Q3 (July-September), and Q4 (October-December). You'll need this for quarterly Form 941 tax filings and cash flow planning that keeps your restaurant staffed through seasonal changes.
How Are Quarters Divided in a Calendar Year?
Your business year breaks into four equal quarters, each covering exactly three consecutive months.
Q1 runs January through March (ending March 31), Q2 covers April through June (ending June 30), Q3 spans July through September (ending September 30), and Q4 includes October through December (ending December 31).
According to the IRS Tax Years documentation, this structure serves as the foundation for business reporting and tax compliance. These quarterly divisions create natural checkpoints for tracking performance, managing cash flow, and meeting federal obligations.
Why Do Business Owners Need to Understand Quarters?
Your restaurant or service business operations involve tax compliance, financial planning, and performance management. All of which align with quarterly periods because the IRS requires quarterly reporting and payment cycles.
Tax reporting requirements make quarterly understanding non-negotiable. If you have hourly teams, you'll file Form 941 quarterly to report wages and employment taxes. Self-employed business owners make estimated tax payments quarterly.
Planning and performance tracking benefit from quarterly checkpoints. Quarterly reviews let you evaluate business performance instead of waiting an entire year for feedback. Restaurant managers use quarterly periods to adjust staffing for seasonal changes. Accurate time tracking eliminates guesswork about labor costs and helps with quarterly tax reporting.
What's the Difference Between Calendar Quarters and Fiscal Quarters?
Calendar quarters follow the standard January-December year and align with the four consecutive three-month periods (Q1: Jan-Mar, Q2: Apr-Jun, Q3: Jul-Sep, Q4: Oct-Dec), according to IRS guidance on tax years.
Fiscal quarters divide a custom 12-month fiscal year that can end on the last day of any month except December, allowing businesses with seasonal revenue patterns to align their reporting periods with their business cycles.
Most small businesses should stick with calendar quarters unless you have strong seasonal patterns. Both calendar-year and fiscal-year businesses face identical tax requirements. The SBA provides guidance on quarterly tax basics for small business owners.
How Does Homebase Help with Quarterly Planning and Reporting?
Getting your quarterly tax reporting right starts with accurate time tracking from day one. Homebase automatically captures precise hours worked by your hourly teams, eliminating the guesswork that leads to payroll errors and tax compliance headaches.
When your servers clock in for summer patio shifts or your retail staff works holiday schedules, Homebase's digital timesheets feed directly into payroll calculations. This means your Form 941 quarterly reports to the IRS contain accurate wage data.
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Sources and Methodology
At Homebase, we rely on up-to-date, authoritative sources to ensure every Question Center article provides accurate guidance for small business owners. We start with primary federal materials from the IRS and Department of Labor, verify details using official agency publications, and use reputable industry resources only to supplement (never replace) official law.
For this piece, we referenced IRS Topic No. 758 for employment tax definitions, IRS Tax Years documentation for calendar and fiscal year distinctions, IRS estimated tax guidance for self-employed payment schedules, Form 941 filing requirements for quarterly employer obligations, IRS Employment Tax Due Dates for specific deadlines,DOL reporting requirementsfor state obligations, and industry sources includingSHRMfor performance review practices and QSR Magazine for restaurant staffing data.