General Accounting Overview

The General Accounting functional area provides a vehicle, the Journal Voucher transaction, for recording manual journal entries that do originate from standard business functions covered in other functional areas. Data entry of this transaction is unlike any other in that individual debit and credit accounts are manually entered instead of being generated from the application.

Common business tasks for the Journal Voucher include adjusting/correcting entries, reversing entries, and accruals. Other uses include recording accounting that is not suited to any other functional area and interfacing accounting activity from other systems.

While the Procurement and Accounts Payable functional areas provide a means to request, order and request payment for goods and services at a commodity code level of detail, the General Accounting area provides the same functionality but without commodity codes. It is quite common to have both a commodity and non-commodity basis for these activities in place simultaneously. All procurements and payables may not have to have commodity details or the ability to enter receivers and invoices into the procurement process. When this is the case, the Accounting Based Spending or the Internal transactions are used.

Common business tasks for the Accounting Based Spending transactions include requisitioning, ordering, and requesting payment. Other uses include encumbrance corrections, expenditure corrections, and a variety of other activities because of the simple interface and flexibility of this transaction.

Common business tasks for the Internal transactions include internal reimbursement purchasing, quasi-external purchasing, and operating transfers. Other uses include recording payment intercept and cost accounting reimbursement activity, which is internally funded.

The General Accounting functional area provides several methods for accurately recording expenditure accruals to reflect goods or services received in a prior year but without having a disbursement or request for payment processed. Accurately recording every dollar is a goal that would cost more to achieve than it is worth. For this reason, many rely on a manual review of current year expenditures that occurred just after a new fiscal year has started to determine what amounts should be removed from the current year and accrued into the prior year. Likewise the review will also look at expenditures booked into the prior year to determine what amounts should be removed from the prior year and put into the current year.

1. The Journal Voucher can be used to record the accrual along with use of the reversal functionality of that transaction to invoke Future Transaction Triggering to reverse the accrual in the current year.  

2. Another method is the recording an accrual directly within the ordering transaction and reducing an existing accounting line. This method can be done manually and with the Open Activity Roll chain process. A later request for disbursement will then liquidate that accrual and create another along with a payable.

3. As an alternative to performing accruals with the journal voucher, Advantage Financial provides an alternative where users enter a single accounting line on a Manual Accrual (ACA) and Manual Accrual Clearing (ACL) transaction instead of debit and credit lines with posting codes. Users not familiar with the journal voucher will find these transactions easier to enter.

4. Advantage Financial contains an automated alternative or supplement to the manual review that is based on service dates. The automated alternative is comprised of two chain jobs – Automated Accrual and Automated Accrual Clearing – to create transactions to move expenditures based on the percentage of time in the prior year based on the service dates.

If either or both of the latter two methods are used, there is an Accrual Inquiry (ACRI) page for researching accruals by those ultimately charged with reviewing for accurate accounting.  From that page there is the ability to create a Disallowance transaction when an accrual clearing was not accurate.

The General Accounting area provides two methods of recording the accounting from payroll. The first is the Payroll Journal Voucher (JVP). The second is a specialized transaction, called the Payroll transaction. The transaction has been designed to work with CGI Advantage HRM.

Common business tasks for the Payroll transaction include encumbering for contracts, accruing leave liabilities, recording payroll expenditures as well as liabilities, requesting external payment of external deductions and fringe costs, and recording internally funded deductions and fringe costs.

The General Accounting area provides the ability to define and track escrow activity when the escrow account is being held by a third party with more than just a unique balance sheet or sub balance sheet. Through the definition of an Escrow ID and association of that ID on one of the following transaction types, tracking is possible from the encumbrance to the fixed asset:

1. Journal Voucher – Allows any type of escrow accounting.

2. Purchase Order / Accounting Based Spending – Encumber funds to ensure budget is available for escrow expenditures.

3. Payment Voucher / Accounting Based Spending – This transaction has two functions: Request payment of escrow to escrow agent and Record reduction in escrow when escrow agent makes disbursement.

4. Cash Receipt – Record any escrow returned.

When the escrow is being held by the Advantage site, that event will continue to be addressed by Trust Fund Accounting features in Advantage Financial.