Time Periods are chunks of time that you schedule your classes in and run reports based on. Some organizations use broad Time Periods like Fiscal Year or Calendar Year. Others use more specific Time Periods like Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall or Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. The benefit of having multiple quarters is that they can be broken out for some reports and it makes rolling classes from one Time Period to another, easier. It also allows you to make specific Time Periods available for public / online registration rather than putting everything up for online registration at one time.