Prior or previous?

[Phoebefail]

Puzzled reading the summary of a companies accounts. A comparison was made with the PRIOR years figures. I would have used previous.
Quora was not clear.
I accept that neither would be wrong. Is it just one's own personal preference.
What do you think?

I’m not sure which is correct but I think accountants use ‘prior years’ as one of their standard phrases so it may be that.

I am not an accountant so I am not familiar with the term 'prior year's accounts'. Would they use it to mean the accounts for the last year only, which I would call the previous year, or do they use it to mean more than one year in the past?

@upinaballoon They were only comparing the one year, the previous year.
Is it more used in America I wonder?
Might it be 'jounalese'? A fractionally shorter word.
Does it sound more official at all?

"In accounting, previous period means the period before the current period.Prior period(s) means, any period before the current period."

Google came up with this

Thanks for all the input.