Default Startdate

[erics]

So, I'm working on a new report for Cognos 10.1.1. There's a dropdown that's populate with a series of dates based on financial periods.
By default, the report is not filtered, however when the users choose the start and end date and click submit, then we filter the data.
The issue is that I'm now trying to have a default filtering. I'd like that when I open the report, it already be filtered to the current financial period.
I've tried creating an optional filter with a coalesce  to current_date, which works great onload, but crashes when you try to change pages.
So, has anyone fixed this issue?