LPL to display prior year

Should be simple.

Looking to create a derived field for prior year. Thought it would be a no-brainer, but I'm slowly losing sanity...

This is delivered for CURRENT year:

LocalYearDerived is a DerivedField

type is Year

return current year

So I assumed 'return current year-1' or 'return current year -1 year' would do the trick. But no...can't be that simple...

This community post dances around the answer, but doesn't quite land:

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Have you tried making a DerivedField of the LocalYearDerived but as type numeric, then doing the calculation?

I was not able to create a numeric field containing current year -1 (or - 1 year). Result was a blank.

What did work though was creating 2 derived fields, the second referencing the first.

CurrentYearNumericDer is a DerivedField

type is Numeric size 4

return current year

PriorYearNumericDer is a DerivedField

type is Numeric size 4

return (CurrentYearNumericDer - 1)

Seems odd that I can do it this way, but not directly. Thanks for steering me in this direction!

This works for me without needing a 2nd field:

        LastYear is a DerivedField
            type is Year
            LastYear = current year
            return LastYear - 1