Financials Features and Functions

Financial system modules for bookkeeping and ensuring accounts are paid or received on time.

General Ledger
General ledger keeps centralized charts of accounts and corporate financial balances. It supports all aspects of the business accounting process. In this module, financial accounting transactions are posted, processed, summarized, and reported. It maintains a complete audit trail of transactions and enables individual business units to view their financial information, while parent companies can roll up all business subsidiaries and view the consolidated information.

Accounts Payable (A/P)

Accounts payable schedules bill payments to suppliers and distributors, and keeps accurate information about owed money, due dates, and available discounts. It provides functionality and integration to other areas such as customer service, purchasing, inventory, and manufacturing control. The software should support the following functionality: AP company policies and procedures; suppliers/voucher master data; payment controls; invoice processing and aging analysis; payment processing; journal voucher processing; AP ledger posting; check processing; AP transactions and controls; and AP reporting.

Fixed Assets
Fixed assets manages depreciation and other costs associated with tangible assets such as buildings, property and equipment. The software should support the following functionality: fixed assets records; asset transactions; asset depreciation; depreciation books; revaluation and interest calculation; and tax reporting.

Cost Accounting
Cost accounting analyzes corporate costs related to overhead, products, and manufacturing orders. It provides a variety of costing approaches such as standard, FIFO, LIFO, average, target, and activity-based costing (ABC). The software should support the following functionality: cost data; cost allocation definitions; cost allocation process; cost management; cost and sales price calculation; activity based costing (ABC); and activity based cost tracing and tracking.

Cash Management
Cash management involves the capability of the system to record cash charges or deposits, recording of cash payments and receipts, cash projection reporting, calculation of expected cash uses/sources, current cash availability, etc. It monitors and analyzes cash holdings, financial deals, and investment risks.

Budgeting

Budgeting involves budgetary controls, budget accounting, budget development, and budget allocation. The software should provide sufficient tools to enable detailed budget development and analysis. Additional functionality should be available to integrate with project management software applications either natively or with external interfaces.

Accounts Receivable
Accounts receivable tracks payments due to a company from its customers. It contains tools to control and expedite the receipt of money from the entry of a sales order to posting payments received. The software should support the following functionality: AR company policies and procedures; customers/voucher master data; bill processing and aging analysis; credit management; cash/payment application, receipt processing; journal voucher processing; AR ledger posting; multicurrency accounting and conversions; AR transactions and controls; and AR reporting.

Financial Reporting
Financial reporting enables robust analysis of company performance through delivered reports. These reports will allow individual business units to view their financial information, while parent companies can roll up all business subsidiaries and view the consolidated information. Additionally, solutions should provide user generated reporting tools that are easy to use and provide sufficient depth of and access to the financial data to permit comprehensive analysis.

Project Accounting
Project accounting uses financial practices to monitor the schedules and spending of projects.

General Ledger Features and Functions

General ledger keeps centralized charts of accounts and corporate financial balances. It supports all aspects of the business accounting process. In this module, financial accounting transactions are posted, processed, summarized, and reported. It maintains a complete audit trail of transactions and enables individual business units to view their financial information, while parent companies can roll up all business subsidiaries and view the consolidated information.

Parameters and Structuring

Chart of Accounts Structure

The chart of accounts is a list of ledger account names and account numbers, creating consistency in terminology and eliminates redundant accounts. A chart of accounts structure should include fields for account and ledger descriptions, to prevent shadow accounts from being created. Data tree tools allow users to see the structure of the fields and summaries, to help with reporting requirements, foster change, etc.

Ledger Development and Management

Enterprise Reporting Structure

Journal Entry and Reporting

The accounting department is typically responsible for recording all transactions in the company in the journal (GL). All of the criteria that fall Journal Entry and Reporting relate to various ways to record journal transactions. For example payroll is an AP item. As paychecks are cut the AP items need to be reconciled with the cash outflow. A software feature might be the automatic reconciliation of payroll deductions when paychecks are issued (as opposed to having an accountant have to key the transactions by hand).

Journal Vouchers
A journal voucher (JV) is a document that authorizes payment for services performed, or for goods that are received or exchanged. As a means to record ledger transactions, JVs may have different approvals for different accounts. For example when someone submits an expense report that money is typically associated with an account on the chart of accounts in the G/L. The account may require a JV for posted entries. The JV may include copies of receipts and a sign off from a manager before the entry can be posted.

Controls for Ledgers

Multicurrency Capabilities

Online Inquiry Reporting

Report Writing Capabilities

Variable Analysis

Parameters and Structuring Features and Functions

Lean manufacturing accounting practices and methods (i.e., manufacturing overheads based on cycle time including labor)

Fiscal calendar is defined by the user

Calendar periods are defined by the user

Calendar can be defined as uneven periods, adjustment periods, or to a maximum of 366 periods

Multiple calendars

Multi-entity financial reporting

Twelve or thirteen fiscal months

Fiscal quarterly periods can be defined as 4-4-5, 5-4-4, or 4-5-4

Organization of calendar periods determined by the user

Calendar may be organized in a variety of ways, supporting 999 periods in a financial year

Open any number of fiscal years or calendar periods at the same time

Companies with different regional presences may set a default currency for the financial division of each region

Sets reporting entity and its organizational characteristics

Distinguishes A/P transactions (of the same type) from different entities

Each entity's ledger can have its own calendar and chart of accounts

Each entity's ledger can have its own accounting periods opened and closed

User may choose between data collection and real time posting modes

Tracks items in the G/L and sub-ledger by quantity and value (in whichever currency is used)

Maintains unit and dollar amount postings in GL and sub-ledgers

User-defined criteria for system purges for general ledger transactions, journal vouchers, and accounts payable data based on the number of years or months of data required to maintain--each purge type has its own unique criteria

Sub-ledgers closed out prior to performing a purge. The closeout process sets all financial account balances in the sub-ledger to zero by posting an equal and offsetting transaction

Specifies a key and rules to have the system automatically purge all records related to the key throughout the system--sub-ledger accounts, sub-ledger transactions, tables, rates

Automatic check to ensure that prior to deleting a financial record, the account balance must have been "closed out" (i.e., nets to zero)

Translation of balance sheet accounts including the ability to have a default rate (spot) that can be overridden on an exception basis (historic), on an account-by-account basis - do not want to set up a rate for every balance sheet account - the override rates will differ ledger to ledger

Automatically inserts actual account balances into the elapsed month's bucket in a future forecast file at the end of each accounting period when the system rolls into the next period

Prevents roll from one accounting period to the next unless the last job run is the financial statements

Audit log required for any changes to table information that may contain rates and information used by the system in any way; log contains before and after, change, date, and user identification

Flexible general ledger key with multiple levels

Exception reporting with drill down capabilities

Change cross charge percentages without retroactively changing previously published financial information

Provision for use of standards that can be automatically propagated throughout the system to the various ledgers

Integration with ADP electronic transmission of payroll data

Uses the budget forecast information to create automatic postings; accruals for any potential overhead item, for example, bonus, depreciation, professional fees, new product development, and marketing expense; supports standard (automatically repeating) postings and entries that are generated each month with reference to amounts maintained in budget fields for the month. The amounts may or may not be the same from month to month

Automatic year-end rolling of balances in sub-ledgers and general ledger control accounts

Automatic linking and posting of control accounts from related sub-ledger accounts

Processes jobs in edit and update mode

Jobs required to include error and warning messages on reports

Reports to include a control report that lists pages on which errors and warnings have occurred

User-defined controls to allow specific jobs to update multiple times in a period

Provides posting views at the company, market, and title/SKU level

Table master functionality--sets parameters in a table, has jobs read the table, and creates postings or reports accordingly

User-defined field names for tables

Method for verifying keying to ensure only appropriate records updated

Archiving of transaction history as well as purge from active files

Chachart of Accounts Structure Features and Functions The chart of accounts is a list of ledger account names and account numbers, creating consistency in terminology and eliminates redundant accounts. A chart of accounts structure should include fields for account and ledger descriptions, to prevent shadow accounts from being created. Data tree tools allow users to see the structure of the fields and summaries, to help with reporting requirements, foster change, etc. Account structures, such as the name and order for each part of the account may be defined online

Account numbers may contain upwards of thirty alphanumeric characters

Defaults to required number of alphanumeric characters rather than requiring the maximum allowable

Common chart of accounts

Common chart of accounts for both the ledgers and the sub-ledgers

Account numbers may be alphanumeric

Hides account number or portions of account number during editing

Hides account number or portions of account number while formulating account sequence

Accounts, cost centers, and departments are ordered in a logical manner or in numeric sequence

Accounts cannot be created until an initial transaction is posted

Creates accounts in accordance with structure of the chart of accounts

Account description field accepts up to twenty-five alphanumeric characters

Specifies account types in structure

The current balance of an account may be determined from within a chart of accounts.

Account balances for the last twenty-four months

Determines the size of the current period's budget for specific accounts

Predicts the size of a future period's budget for specific accounts

Alphanumeric account keys

Statistical accounts, which specify user-defined values and descriptions containing information that is not monetary

Create cost center entities, supporting up to at least 999

Fields and segments can be defined in an account structure

Analysis fields may be defined by users

Sub-account codes for product lines within the account

Intercompany accounts may be culled automatically

Sub-account numbers

Track multiple organizational divisions such as business areas and profit centers

Tracks multiple entities in instances where each organization has a specific accounting structure

Consolidates multiple entities (unlimited) results including calendars, chart of accounts, and currencies

Manages structures for all levels of all organizations

Comprehensive system reorganization facilities including the ability to relate a new chart of accounts to a previous one

Multilevel hierarchy roll-ups as defined by the user

Manage account hierarchies via a GUI interface (drag-and-drop)

Chart of accounts and titles may have multiple entities, which can be consolidated

Data fields using descriptive flexfields may be added without programming

Assigns a particular currency to each account

Specifies accounting periods, including monthly, quarterly, and year to date

Fiscal year accounting periods are determined by the user

Accounting periods may be designated by calendar or fiscal years

Per-account entry on a monthly basis or annually by cost center

Budget accounts for current and future year

Accounts may be added to the chart of accounts with characteristics replicated for all departments

Departments may be added to the chart of accounts with characteristics replicated for all expense accounts

Budgets and accounts can be assigned to a department

Associates titles and description information with all accounts

Hides account numbers for reporting

Maintenance of history for two years (viewing) and five years (reporting)

Standard chart of accounts that can be automatically copied from one ledger to the new ledger. Results in the automatic creation of a standard set of financial statements, for example, balance sheets, income statements, and overhead statements

Validity checks to ensure existence of standard accounts