General Ledger
From PERPWiki
Contents |
Overview
The GL section will not be accessible to the average user. The accounting team can use it for reconciling bank statements, correcting erroneous posts, and generating a wide range of financial reports.
In its alpha form (November, 2007), four sections and one report have been completed:
a Journal Entry
b Bank Transactions
c Reconciliation
d View Transactions
Trial Balance
Cashflow (future)
Net Worth (future)
An administrator must set up the list of accounts (including any categories and groups required), banking information, etc. before the GL can be used. Permissions must also be set to allow appropriate access to selected users.
Screen shots in this section may be based on Test, as Production is largely empty of transactions. However, the screens and function should be similar.
THE GL APPLICATION REQUIRES TESTING BY THE ACCOUNTING TEAM
GL Home Page
Figure 3-1 The GL home screen showing the sections at left and reports at right. An asterisk after a link means that it has not been translated into other languages.
Journal Entry
Most posts to the GL will be automated from other sections. The Journal Entry screen will be used by the accounting team for direct control of GL entries in special circumstances, such as reversing an erroneous post (inadvertent transactions cannot be removed or deleted, they can only be offset with another transaction)
Figure 3-2: The Journal Entry Home screen
The transaction number is blank for now, and will be filled in automatically when you have completed your entry.
A manual entry starts with setting the transaction type, as shown in Fig. 3-3.
Figure 3-3 Transaction Types pull-down menu (The transaction types were set in the Admin section)
Following that, set the date for the transaction. Transaction dates can be post-dated or pre-dated. Tp set the date, do one of the following:
- accept the default (today's date) or
- type in the date using the default format set in Preferences, or
- use the calendar control.
Figure 3-4 Type or select the date for the transaction.
Figure 3-5 - Selecting an account for an entry.
To add a new transaction:
- Set the transaction type pull-down
- Enter or select the date of the transaction
- Add a new line
- a. Click "New Transaction" bottom left to open the account list
- b. Select the account for the first entry of the transaction
- c. Enter the amount in either the debit or credit field as appropriate
- d. Enter a narrative comment (Required)
- e. Click Add Line
- Repeat for the balancing entry steps (b) through (e) above
- If the transaction is correctly entered and in balance,
- a. Click "Post Transaction" to complete the entry and post to GL. At this point, the transaction will be assigned the next number in sequence.
- b. Click "New Transaction" to reject these entries and start afresh.
Figure 3-6 Two entries in a transaction. (In the alpha release, the amount will appear in accounting format padded with leading spaces and decimal points aligned vertically).
As lines are added, they appear in the center of the screen and if the transaction is balanced, a message to that effect appears. Errors are caught quickly and can be corrected by clicking the browser back button and re-entering the line.
The user can go on to add more entries, in complementary lines, then post the batch. In this case, all the lines comprise a single transaction and will be given a single transaction number.
However, multiple lines cannot be removed or edited, and the only way to remove an error is to use the browser back key to move before the error occurred. This may cause the loss of some entered data.
It may be simpler just to post one completed (balanced) transaction at a time.
ONCE A TRANSACTION HAS BEEN POSTED, IT CANNOT BE EDITED OR CORRECTED.
Figure 3-7 Most recently posted transaction. This has four lines in a single transaction. I don't know if this is okay from an accounting perspective as it is actually two transactions.
Following a post, the screen will be as in Figure 7, above, showing the most recently posted transaction. This is FYI only; nothing can be changed or edited.
Figure 3-8 Here, a single line is balanced against two split lines, made by someone playing with the demo site. This would make perfect sense if the split were between cost of goods and sales tax, which combined would balance the payment for the item.
Click New Transaction to enter another transaction, or use the Side Menu or Top Menu to go on to new work.
Bank Transaction
Intended to handle currency transfers, this screen will be available only to specified members of the accounting team.
Payments to and from bank accounts to other accounts in various currencies and exchange rates can be entered and tracked.
Figure 3-9
The Bank Transaction screen, which for some reason is headed "Withdraw from".
The double entry is handled automatically from this screen. The transaction type, bank account, currency, exchange rate, and payment method are set, each in turn. The date is entered by keyboard or from the calendar pop-up.
Select an account from the list, enter Credit or a Debit and a narrative, then click the Add Line button.
Figure 3-10 Entering a Credit gives the message above.
Entering a Debit gives a similar message:
Figure 3-11
At the same time, the screen heading changes from "Withdraw from" into "Deposit into."
Feature Request: there is probably supposed to be a bank account name after "from" and "into".
Reconciliation
Figure 3-12
The purpose of this screen is to allow the accounting group to reconcile a bank account balance with the statement.
THIS SECTION HAS NOT BEEN TESTED.
View Transactions
The purpose of this section is to give the Accounting team a way search and view the hundreds of transactions that will occur daily in the system.
Figure 3-13 Search by date
In the above example, a date range has been chosen. The Start Date and End Date are entered (by typing or from the calendar popup). Be sure that Transaction Type and Account have been set. Then click the Search button to activate the search.
If the start/end date fields are left empty, the search will bring up transactions for all dates including future dates.
A note on financial and other reports
pERP integrates with a package called Open Office for reports. Ask IT for instructions to install Open Office on your computer so that you can generate the reports.
GL Reports
GL Reports are here
GL Preferences
There are no user-settable GL Preferences
