The Clearing Account Maintenance (CAM) chain looks for matching Due To and Due From entries on the specified input journal and then creates a JV - Clearing Account Maintenance (JVCAM) document to reverse these entries and update Cash. The Clearing Account Maintenance Parameters (CAMP) table defines the many functional parameters needed for the Clearing Account Maintenance process. This table provides easy data entry and editing prior to execution of the Clearing Account Maintenance process.
The main use of this program is to facilitate internal transactions against a prior fiscal year when cash updates against that prior year have been cut off - adjustment periods for example. These clearing accounts are then cleared out through cash in the new fiscal year.
The program starts with selection from a specified input journal. While the Accounting Journal can be used, there are others that are smaller and more targeted to the activity selected for this program. The Internal Journal is the most likely choice as records are written to this journal whenever the Internal Fund field is populated by document processing. All event type processors that create clearing account entries populate this field with the fund that is 'due to’ or 'due from’ the value in the regular fund field. However, if clearing account records are created that do not have the internal fund value populated (manually entered journal vouchers for example), the Internal Journal will not contain such records for clearing.
After the Clearing Account Maintenance job is run, accounts can be reviewed on ITD Balance Sheet Balance (BBALD and BBALS) tables or in an appropriate ledger to see that clearing account balances have gone to zero. At any point, these accounts can be manually cleared if needed without having to run the batch program or the program can be re-run.
It is very important to understand that this program does not clear out any nominal accounts such as internal accrued expenditures or internal accrued revenue. Careful setup of internal event types is critical on the Allowed Event Types for Document Code (AETDC) and BFY Staging tables to ensure that the CAM job does not clear only balance sheets and leave accrued accounts in the application with what will amount to cash offsets after the clearing. When used as described earlier in this section to prevent updates to cash in a prior year, BFY Staging should prohibit those internal event types that update cash and those that use clearing accounts with accrual nominal accounts, while only allowing the event types intended for this program (please see the Internal Accounting and Inventory Accounting sub sections of the Accounting Model Delivered Configuration section of this users guide for a listing of those event types).
The Clearing Account Maintenance chain job is comprised of four batch jobs:
*Clearing Account Maintenance - Based on the parameters entered and the selection logic, a XML file is created for all of the selected records.
Load JV documents - This job loads the XML file created in Step 1.
Submit JV documents - JV documents loaded in the previous steps are submitted using a batch submit job.
Create Reports - Multiple reports are produced to provide assurance and account information.
*For detailed information on the job (such as when to run, input, output, and process parameters) refer to the associated run sheet in the CGI Advantage Financial - General Accounting Run Sheets guide.