Special Accounts & Special Fund Accounts

The Special Accounts (SPEC) page supplies the majority of default accounts for transaction processing. The sections on the SPEC page along with several others in the Fixed Asset, Inventory, Treasury, and Accounts Receivable areas are used only when a particular functional area is used, meaning there is no need to complete sections and fields that will not be used. Special Accounts is one of the critical setup pages that must be completed before any accounting transactions are processed to enable users with the ability to only enter one side of an accounting transaction. Which accounts default when, is controlled by configuration that is detailed in the ”Accounting Model” topic later in this guide. Review of that tab after the current one is imperative in the complete understanding of defaulting accounts.

Most accounts contain a field for both a primary element code and a sub element code followed by an override allowed indication.

Although certain default accounts are available on other pages, these override indications do not control them. The override indications are specifically for the Special Fund Accounts (SPECFUND) page, which is used when default accounts should vary by individual fund. When a fund is to have a different default account, it is only necessary to complete that one account field and not all fields. The corresponding override indication on Special Accounts must be true in order for the Special Fund Accounts default to be used. For brevity, when the term SPEC is used from this point forward, it refers to SPEC and SPECFUND unless otherwise noted.

One advantage to using Special Fund Accounts is when a fund needs a balance sheet with a different name for reporting or needs to use (or not use) the Level Of Control functionality found on the Balance Sheet Account (BSA) reference page.

All default accounts are optional unless a System Option (SOPT) indication has made the default accounts required. If a transaction is validated with a balance sheet account posting code and no account defaults, an error will be issued, preventing the transaction from accepting. Not every posting code will or should have a default account as some are intended to be used on transactions where users manually enter a balance sheet account.

The following sections provide you with the available options and descriptions for the various functional areas (tabs) on Special Accounts.