Application Features

General Ledger is designed to operate as the center of your financial information management system. The application compiles data provided by journal entries and integrated applications, and translates this data into custom financial statements, management reports and operational analyses. General Ledger also serves as the basis for account number validation and other sophisticated processing capabilities throughout your system.

General Ledger provides the accounting information required for analysis and control of your company’s financial activities. Journal entries which are entered through an on-line user workstation, and detail or summary transactions generated from other applications, provide the input to General Ledger. All transactions entering the system are controlled and processed against individual accounts. Account validation occurs on-line at entry time and does not allow invalid or out-of-balance data to post to master files.

General Ledger can support either twelve or thirteen financial periods per fiscal year. Accounting reports are compiled and presented using data from the Account Balances file, which contains ending balances for each month of the current fiscal year, and for as many years of history as you want to keep.

The fiscal year may be synchronized with or independent of the calendar year. Other applications may coincide with the general ledger accounting period, or may be ahead of or behind that used by General Ledger. Transaction entry functions allow the user to specify the month and year to which a transaction is to be posted.

The Close Month function within General Ledger transfers future posting entries to the Month-to-Date Postings file for the next accounting month. At end-of-year, revenue and expense account balances are added to retained earnings and then reset to zero, to begin accumulations for the next year. Retained earnings may be automatically kept in one or several accounts, depending on how you define your account structure.

Account Structure

General Ledger allows you to structure your account number to meet your own requirements. The account number structure can be subdivided to facilitate profit center or cost center reporting. You can define as many as four account components, each having up to ten characters (although the total number of characters cannot exceed 12). In addition, you can describe each component, and this description will appear on screens and reports.

Transactions detail may be automatically maintained on a month-to-date and/or year-to-date basis, and is designated separately for each account. Detail can be kept by journal; by journal and operator ID; by journal, operator ID, and date; in complete summary; or in complete detail.

Transaction Control

On the General Ledger Parameters file, there are two entries which allow you to define the level of transaction control detail that is appropriate for your business. These fields are labeled “Ask for Operator ID?” and “Use Transaction Control?”.

Every transaction file is keyed by Operator ID and a sequential Control Number that is a part of your audit trail. If you enter ‘N’ (No) for “Ask for Operator ID?”, the system will automatically assign the Operator ID and Control Number for each group of transactions, and will not allow any operator to edit another operator’s transactions. No control or hash totals will be kept, and no data will be posted to the Transaction Control file. Also, you will not be able to enter transactions in a foreign currency.

If you enter ‘Y’ (Yes) to “Ask for Operator ID?” and ‘N’ (No) for “Use Transaction Control?”, the system will assign the Operator ID and Control Number for each group of transactions, but the Control Number can be changed. Additionally, any operator will be allowed to edit another operator’s transactions. No control or hash totals will be kept, and no data will be posted to the Transaction Control file. Also, you will not be able to enter transactions in a foreign currency.

If you enter ‘Y’ (Yes) to “Ask for Operator ID?” and ‘Y’ (Yes) to “Use Transaction Control?”, the system will assign the Operator ID and Control number to each group of transactions, but the Control Number can be changed. In addition, control and hash totals can be entered and will be balanced against the sum of the transactions. Each operator to restrict access to his or her transactions, and transactions can be entered in foreign currencies. One record will be written to the Transaction Control file for each group of transactions posted, detailing the Operator ID, Control Number, Description, Number of Transactions and Las Transaction Posted, Total Amount Posted, Number of Errors, and Number of Warnings. This file can be printed on reports and viewed through an inquiry.

Budgets

Balance and budget data can be maintained for as many years as you need. Multiple budgets may be established for an account; an unlimited number of budgets can be defined. A budget analysis report is provided.

A separate application, called Budget Analysis, is available as an add-on to General Ledger. This application provides the ability to enter and generate variable budgets; create budgets from balances; copy and delete budgets; print budget analysis, review, and variance reports; and interface the Budgets file with graphics software. It also allows you to transfer budget information to spreadsheet software for additional refining, and it can update the Budgets file with the results from the spreadsheet.

Summary and Allocation Accounts

In General Ledger there are two special types of options to allow you to summarize and/or separate account balance information. These options are called Summary Accounts and Allocation Accounts.

Summary Accounts allow you to define any number of detail account balance records which are to be summarized into another account. This summarization occurs when the Summarize Accounts option is selected from the Monthly Processing menu. Summary accounts cannot be posted to directly; their value comes from summing the detail accounts defined to be a part of the summary account. Summary accounts can be printed on statements and other reports.

Allocation Accounts are the complement to Summary Accounts. Allocation Accounts allow you to specify how to allocate (split up) an account’s balance into any number of Receiving Allocation Accounts. Account balance amounts can be allocated as a fixed percent, a fixed amount, or as a ratio of the sum of other accounts. An Over/Under account can be specified so that the sum of the allocations exactly equals the amount to be allocated. Allocation account journal entries are created when Generate Allocation Accounts is selected from the Transaction Processing menu.

Financial Statements & Reports

A financial statement generator allows you to define flexible financial or management reports using account balance, unit balance, foreign balance, and/or budget data, or source and use data for a Statement of Cash Flows. Financial Statements can optionally include information about summary accounts. Because General Ledger is updated with each posting procedure throughout the system, financial statements with current information are always available.

The Financial Statement generator offers sophisticated 13-column totalling and formatting capabilities, automatic period updating, and cost/profit center reporting. Arithmetic operations are permitted based upon defined column data. In comparative statements, horizontal and vertical percentages may be calculated.

Multiple printed statements can be created from a single format definition by attaching print parameters to a format and storing the combined format and print parameters. Print parameters include accounting period, account components, rounding selections, data format options, types of data to be accessed, and calculations or analyses to be performed.

An intercompany processing utility allows you to combine general ledgers from multiple companies for the purpose of printing consolidated financial statements. This utility permits the combination of account balance, unit balance, foreign balance, and/or budget records.

General Subsidiary

Another application, General Subsidiary, contains additional capability that you may find useful in your day-to-day operations. General Subsidiary is available as an add-on to General Ledger.

General Subsidiary provides you with the ability to expend the reporting capability of any account by any number of segments. It provides a further breakdown of the account balance information by allowing a “subsidiary code” to be appended to the account number during Transaction Processing. This in turn allows you to track various revenue, expense, or asset transactions explicitly.

For example, you might want to keep track of costs and income from a particular product or service that you sell. If you have Accounts Payable, when you purchase goods that contribute to the making of that product or service, you can identify the subsidiary code as well as the account number on the invoice line item. If you have Accounts Receivable, you can identify the revenues produced by that product or service by supplying the subsidiary code on the sales invoice line item. The sum of all those postings can then tell you which of your products or services is the most profitable to your company.

Another example of the use of General Subsidiary might be to identify and collect information on the costs associated with creating product. These products could be as diverse as the construction of a building, the manufacturing of machines from purchased parts, or the writing and publishing of a book.

If you do not have Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable, you can still collect information in General Subsidiary by entering the amounts as Journal Entries in General Ledger. Conversely, if you have Inventory Control, Fixed Assets, Order Entry, or Purchase Orders, you can also extract information from these applications.