Creating G/L Accounts

After you identify all the G/L accounts that your company needs, use the G/L Account Maintenance screen to create a record for each G/L account.

You must be assigned level 1 or greater of the GL.MAINT authorization key to access G/L Account Maintenance and create account.

To create a G/L account:

1. From the G/L > G/L Maintenance menu, select G/L Account Maintenance to display the G/L Account Maintenance screen.

2. In the Account field, type new, press Enter, and select New from the list.

3. In the Full Description field, enter the official name of the account as you want it to appear on reports.  Make the description as complete as possible using 40 characters or less. The words in the description are indexed for G/L account retrieval.

The system populates the Account field with the information from the Full Description field.

4. In the Short Desc field, enter a shortened version of the full account description to display when a data entry screen does not have sufficient room to display the full description.

The system copies the first 15 characters from the Full Description field. Confirm or change this description, as necessary. This field is required.

5. In the Internal Description field, enter descriptive information that you do not want to appear on data entry screens or reports.

For example, you could enter the terms of a loan, or the name of an individual connected with the account.

6. In the Key Words field, enter additional words or numbers indexed for searching along with the information in the Full Description field. For example, if, in your old system, you identified your G/L accounts by account numbers, you can put that account number in this field. You can enter up to 10 lines of keywords.

Note: Future searches are easier if you use the Key Words field.

7. In the Account Category field, place an asterisk (*) next to the category that represents the account's normal balance. This category determines how the account balances display on financial reports. You are not required to flag an asset account as an asset or a liability account as a liability, instead, this is an option to flag each account so that it shows positive if it has normal debit or credit balances.

• Asset or Expense – Indicates that debit balances on the account are shown as positive amounts on your financial reports.

You can flag the following accounts as asset accounts to show a negative balance: Consigned Inventory, Accumulated Depreciation, Accumulated Amortization, COGS Returns, Clear Purchase to Inventory, Clear Freight to Inventory, and Purchase Discounts.

• Liability, Capital, or Revenue – Indicates that credit balances on the account are shown as a positive amount on your financial reports.

You can flag accounts as liability accounts to show a negative balance, such as Returns and Sales Discounts.

Note: Regardless of how you decide to flag each account, be sure that all accounts in the same Start/End group are flagged the same. This makes reports easier to understand.

8. In the Legal Sources field, place an asterisk (*) next to each source from which it is legal to manually post adjustments to this account.

• C/R Adjustment Allow – Allows manual adjustments in Cash Receipts.

• A/P Adjustment Allow – Allows manual adjustments in Accounts Payable.

• Inv Adjustment Allow – Allows offsetting an account to inventory in an inventory adjustment.

• Misc Charge Allowed – Allows a product to post to this G/L account directly during sales order entry. Use miscellaneous charge products to itemize expenses such as assembly charges or restocking charges.

• Inv Override Allowed – Allows the account to act as an inventory override account. Use inventory override accounts when you want to offset the cost of goods sold (COGS) general ledger posting for a product or service with a posting to an account other than a standard inventory account.

You cannot flag accounts assigned to an autoposting item as an override account. If you flag a general ledger account as an inventory override account, and the general ledger account is assigned to any products or price lines, you must remove the account as an override from all the products and price lines before removing the override flag from the general ledger account.

On sales orders, purchase orders, or transfer orders, when the system updates general ledger accounts and a line item has an inventory account override, the system uses the inventory account override in place of any occurrence of the inventory account. In addition, if you press Alt+Tilde (~) in any of the order entry screens, any occurrence of an overridden account has a designation of INVTY+

9. Place an asterisk (*) next to the account type you want this account to be:

• Balance Sheet – Flags the account for inclusion in balance sheet reports. Balance sheets detail your assets and liabilities for any given period of time, typically monthly.

• Income Statement – Flags the account for inclusion in income statements. Income statements contain a summary of your business' financial operations such as revenue and costs, for any given period of time, typically quarterly or yearly.

An entry in this field is required and important for the following reasons:

11. When you print an audited report, the system verifies that the report template has included all of the appropriate accounts.

12. An audited Listing of Accounts Report must include every G/L account.

13. An audited Balance Sheet Report must include every G/L account that is designated as a Balance Sheet account.

14. An audited Operating Statement Report must include every G/L account that is designated as an Income Statement account.

15. An audited Trial Balance Report must include every G/L account in the first portion of the report, and every G/L account that is designated as an Income Statement account in the Retained Earnings portion of the report.

10. In the Account Status field, place an asterisk (*) next to the status you want to select:

• Active is a G/L account to which you can post transactions.

• Inactive is a G/L account to which you cannot post transactions.

11. In the Detail field, place an asterisk (*) next to the detail level you want to select:

• Branch Detail – Prints branch details for this account.

• Export Detail – Prints in one of the following formats:

If you run the General Ledger Export Report in Summary mode, the report includes any general ledger account that has the Export Detail field checked in detail form. All others are included in summary form.

If you run the General Ledger Export Report in Summary All mode, all general ledger accounts are included in the report in summary form regardless of whether the Export Detail field for an account is checked.

12. In the Currency Exchange field, place an asterisk (*) next to the exchange rate you want to select.  This option determines the exchange rate to be used for converting transaction amounts in a foreign currency, if a report includes transactions from this account.

• Historical Exchange – Uses the exchange rate that was in effect on the transaction date.

• Recalculated Exchange – Uses the exchange rate that is in effect on the report end date.

• Average – Uses an average exchange rate by taking the average of all exchange rates within the reporting period and dividing the balance by the amount for that period. Days that do not carry a balance are not included in the average.

13. Use the following hot keys, as necessary:

14. Press Esc to save the information and exit the screen.