Custom Payroll Month Cycle (26th–25th) in ERPNext Query Reports – Best Practices?

ERPNext
1

Our payroll cycle does not follow the standard calendar month.
Instead, it runs from:

26th of previous month → 25th of selected month
Example:

  • January payroll → 26 Dec to 25 Jan

  • March payroll → 26 Feb to 25 Mar

While creating a Query Report, I initially hard-coded day columns from 1 to 31 to display attendance/payroll data. This caused multiple issues:

Issues Faced

  1. Invalid Dates Appearing

    • February payroll shows columns for 29–31, even in non-leap years.

    • These dates appear because the report is hard-coded to 31 days.

  2. Wrong Date Range for Payroll Month

    • Selecting March still pulls incorrect dates from February (29–31).

    • Payroll logic breaks because ERPNext correctly stores dates, but the report does not respect real calendar boundaries.

  3. Maintenance Nightmare

    • Hard-coding day columns means extra logic for:

      • 28-day months

      • 30-day months

      • Leap years

    • This doesn’t scale well.