Payment requests, with or without commodity information, contain Service From and Service To Dates for users to enter a period of time where goods or services were received. That period may be just one day for goods. However, for services the period is likely longer. There are no set controls for requiring any span of time for a particular commodity Line Type. Service date entry is strictly a user responsibility with only a Document Control, called Service Date Severity, for requiring data entry verses defaulting to the Record Date of the document.
Accurate accrued expenditure accruals into a prior year on a payment requests can be done with users entering the portion attributable to the prior year on an accounting line with that prior fiscal year and an accounting period, while entering the portion attributable to the current year on a second accounting with the current fiscal year and accounting period. Such data entry is only feasible when there are one or two accounting lines on the payment request to split. Use of service dates and the Automated Accrual batch process is an approach that requires less work of the user entering the payment request. For payment requests generated by the Matching process, use of the Automated Accrual process is the only option.
The Automated Accrual batch process will select accrued expenditure journal records with a Service From Date prior to the current accounting fiscal year and create Automated Accrual transactions using the delivered ACCA document code to move the appropriate accrued expense amount from the current accounting and budget fiscal year to the prior years. Selection is not restricted to just the first document version but subsequent modifications and even a cancellation will be selected to adjust accruals as necessary. Modifications of amounts down or up, changes to move the Service From Date forward, and cancellations will result in accrued expenditures being reduced in the prior year, which is the opposite from normal accruals.
One Automated Accrual (ACCA) will be created for each service date range found on a payment request, something set at the commodity line for the Payment Request document type and the accounting line for the Accounting Based Spending document type. Documents created will memo reference the payment request to tie the two documents together for reporting and querying by the Accrual Inquiry (ACRI) page. The ACCA will also update the referenced payment request accounting line with the percentage accrued into the prior year.
Two accounting lines are required to perform the accrual, one for the prior year and one for the current year. The sum of the two lines will always be zero, so all ACCA documents should sum to zero. As the payment request is in the current fiscal year, the batch process can use the Chart of Accounts Crosswalk (COAX) page to determine COA for the prior year. A special Process ID on COAX must be used – ACC.
The process uses the Automated Accrual/Accrual Clearing Exceptions (ACRE) page to exclude activity that should not be accrued. One record delivered on the ACRE page should be left on the page for accurate accruals:
Exclusion of document code GAE as there is an accrued expenditure event type available for that document code.
The Automated Accrual batch process is a chain process consisting of four batch jobs:
Accrual Preprocess – finds qualifying entries per parameters and excludes records that match records on the Automated Accrual/Accrual Clearing Exceptions (ACRE) table.
Create Accruals – creates the ACCA documents with a Status of Ready for the load process.
Load Accruals – Submits the documents and creates an exception file.
Exception Report – Accrual documents that could not be submitted to Final are written to a report.