Why it wants a term before it'll let you in

A term is your reporting period — a semester, a quarter, a season, whatever your year is cut into. The active one drives the dashboard, every per-period number, and where dated records land. Writes with a date outside it are refused outright, which is why this screen doesn't have a "skip" button.

If you're an admin

• Create new — name it, set the dates, and it becomes active immediately.
• Extend current — pushes the last term's end date out and reactivates it. Only offered when the org has had a term before, so a new org won't see it.