HiFinance
5
SECTION 6 - GENERAL LEDGER MENU
The General Ledger is designed for use as part of
the integrated HiFinance system. It can also be used in stand-alone mode, although
some functions, such as BANKING must
be accessed through the DEBTORS MENU.
The General Ledger provides a means whereby the
other sub-systems (eg Debtors, etc.) can be summarised for reporting purposes.
Entries can be posted directly into the General Ledger for transactions that do
not involve Debtors or Creditors. These include Bank charges, interest
payments, Directors’ fees, etc. The information is collated and organised so
that HiFinance can produce Profit & Loss Statements and Balance Sheets.
The GENERAL
LEDGER MENU is accessed as item 6 or <F6> from the MAIN
MENU. On selecting this menu the following menu will be displayed:
To return to the MAIN MENU, press <ESC>.
Fields available on the GENERAL LEDGER MASTER file.
Name Comments
ACCOUNT CODE This is the General Ledger code. This is the code by
which the account will be referenced throughout HiFinance. It is of the format 9999.99. Any number from 0000.01
to 9999.99 may be used. Normally, accounts only use the
whole number portion of the code. The fractional portion is usually reserved
for sub-accounts. This structure allows you to, for instance, split up expenses
with, say, account 1000.00 being a heading for CARS and 1000.01 being the first car, 1000.02 being the second, and so on. 1000.99 can be inserted as a sub-totalling account for
reporting in the PROFIT & LOSS
report.
NAME The name or description of the account, eg. CARS. It may be up to 50 characters long. This field
must not be left blank.
PERIOD BALANCES These are the account balances for each by period
for this account. They are the sums of all the transactions posted to this
account.
TOTAL YTD or CLOSING BALANCE HiFinance will display the
total of each year at the bottom of the column. (See SECTION 6.2.) Profit & Loss accounts will
only show the total of that year. Balance Sheet accounts show a running balance
with OPENING BALANCES at the top of each column.
EXPECTED SIGN It is normal, in a General Ledger, to show
transactions and balances as Debits and Credits, rather than positives and
negatives. In HiFinance, every transaction and carries its true sign. This
means that every Debit balance is a positive and every Credit balance is a
negative. To save clutter on the screen, you are required to enter the expected
sign of the account. This is the sign the account will normally have, eg
expenses are normally Debit accounts. The field must be D for Debit or C for Credit. HiFinance will
display DB after a balance if the
balance is negative and the expected sign is Debit. Similarly, CR will be displayed if the balance is positive and the expected sign is
Credit. In either case, neither CR nor DB will be displayed if the balance is zero.
ACCOUNT TYPE This field describes to the system what type of account
this is. This information is used in certain reports and is also tested in some
transaction entry programs. The available options are: A, L, P, R, E, N, M, H, S, T and G. These stand for Asset, Liability, Proprietorship, Revenue, Expense,
Appropriation, Main-Heading, Heading, Sub-Total, Total, Grand-Total
respectively. Types M, H, S, T and G represent non-posting
accounts. They are used for reporting and internal totalling. HiFinance will
stop you from posting to these accounts.
You must take care
to not change an account from a posting to a non-posting account, if there is a
balance. If you do, the balance will disappear from reports, such as
Profit/Loss, and so will unbalance that class of reports. Move any balance to a
different account, if you intend to do this.
Sub-Total, Total,
Grand-Total will cause the Profit/Loss and Balance Sheet reports to print a
total of all accounts above that account and will reset the total. Eg if you
place a sub-total after, say, your phone accounts (assuming you have several of
these), HiFinance will print a total of those accounts. This also assumes that
you have created a sub-total before these accounts. HiFinance will total all
accounts since the last sub-total account. Totals will also reset Sub-totals
and Grand-totals will reset the other two. Each type prints in a different way
(increasingly bold). In this way, you can format the reports without resorting
to external programs, such as Excel.
DISPLAY WARNING ON USE This causes certain transaction entry programs to
display a warning that the account is not normally posted to, without actually
stoping the posting.
ASK FOR EMPLOYEE NUMBER This field is only used in certain installations to
tell HiFinance that this account should carry an employee number.
TAX RATE HiFinance allows for several tax rates to be
defined. Here you define to the system, which rate is to be used. You do not
enter the percentage rate here, rather you enter the rate’s number (0 - 9) as defined in the TAX RATES, see SECTION 7.2.7. This allows you to change the
percentage rates without having to go back to every General Ledger account.
DATE LAST POSTED This displays the date of the last posting to this
account.
MODIFIED ON/AT/BY This displays the last time this record was modified
(eg description). It is stamped with the date, time and the usercode of person who did the
modification.
NOTE This is a field that allows you to attach a comment
to the account. For instance, you might use
HISTORY This is a record that is built up automatically whenever
you post transactions to the General Ledger, either directly, via General
Ledger Transactions, or indirectly via Invoicing and Purchasing. You can view
the record in Enquiries and you can modify it in Modify. Generally, there is no
need to modify this record, but if you wish to, eg remove an offensive entry,
you can do it this way.
If
you enable the multi-bank function (see SECTION 7.2.1)
the following fields will also appear:
IS THIS A BANK If this account is a bank account, you should enter Y here. Otherwise enter N. The default bank (as
specified in the CONTROL ACCOUNTS (see SECTION
6.5.2) must be flagged as a bank. If you have tagged the account as a
bank, you must enter the following fields. Otherwise the fields are all
automatically cleared.
BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER Here you enter the bank account number or BSB. There is space for up
to 10 digits here although most bank accounts are shorter. Note that only the
last 4 digits are significant when searching for a bank account. This field is
compulsory if the account is flagged as a bank. Otherwise it is left blank.
BANK ACCOUNT NAME This field contains the name of your cheque account, which
might be different to your company name. The field is up to 50 characters long.
This field is compulsory if the account is flagged as a bank. Otherwise it is
left blank.
BANK NAME This is the name of your bank, eg ANZ, BOM, etc. The field is 3
characters long. This field is compulsory if the account is flagged as a bank and
you have enabled the printing of bank deposit slips. Otherwise it is left
blank.
BRANCH This is the name of your branch (usually the suburb).
The field is 15 characters long. This field is compulsory if the account is
flagged as a bank and you have enabled the printing of bank deposit
slips. Otherwise it is left blank.
ALLOW CHEQUE NUMBER RANGE Here you enter the lowest and highest cheque numbers you
can enter into this account. By default the range is 00000000 through to 99999999. However, to avoid
accidentally entering a cheque number outside the range of your chequebook, you
should enter the starting and finishing ranges of your chequebook here. You can
always change the numbers when you start a new book. Only one range can be
entered here so you cannot run two chequebooks (for the one bank) unless they
are in sequential ranges.
DATE BANK DEPOSIT This displays the date of the last deposit to this account.
This might be different to the last transaction date.
DEPOSITS PENDING This field will be N initially. When deposits
are made (and you have enabled printing of BANK
DEPOSIT SLIP see SECTION 1.3.4.3) HiFinance automatically
changes this field to Y. When the deposit slip file
is cleared, the field is returned to N again. This is a quick
reference to see if a DEPOSIT SLIP is
printable.
