Major Features
Enable Average Balance Processing
for Specified Sets of Books
If you want to use average balance processing in General Ledger, you must enable the functionality for a specific set of books. With this feature, you can enable average balance processing only for those sets of books that require it. This ensures that you incur no additional overhead unless you need average balance processing.
Capture Average Balances
General Ledger calculates and stores the necessary aggregate balance information needed to compute average balance amounts as of any day in the year.
Effective-Date Transaction Processing
A transaction's effective date determines which end-of-day and aggregate balances are updated by General Ledger. These balances, in turn, determine the calculated values of your average balances.
Transaction Calendar Control
Certain organizations that need average balance processing, such as financial institutions, are required to post transactions only on business days. Posting on weekends or holidays is not allowed, although some organizations do post period-end accruals on non-business days.
In General Ledger, you control transaction posting with a transaction calendar. When you define a transaction calendar, you choose which days of the week will be business days. You also specify the holidays, using a form provided for maintaining the transaction calendar.
Each set of books, for which average balance processing is enabled, is assigned a transaction calendar. When transactions are posted, General Ledger checks the effective dates against the transaction calendar. If the dates are valid, the transaction is posted. For invalid dates, you can tell the system how you want the transaction handled.
Other features of transaction calendar control are as follows:
- Multiple sets of books may share a transaction calendar.
- You can set a profile option to allow certain individuals to post transactions on non-business days.
- Controls are applied to imported journals, as well as manual journals.
Control Transaction Balancing by Effective Date
Normally, General Ledger requires that total transactions balance for an entire period. When average balance processing is enabled, the system checks total transactions for each effective date to ensure that debits and credits balance. When they do not, General Ledger rejects the transactions, or, if you have enabled suspense posting, the system creates a balancing entry to the suspense account.
- Manual journals are balanced directly, since the effective date is entered at the journal level, not for individual journal lines.
- Imported journals are sorted and must be in balance by effective date within each source.
Allowing Back-Value Transactions
You can post transactions with effective dates prior to the current date. When you do so, the effect on average balances is determined by the effective date, rather than the system or current accounting date. General Ledger adjusts the ending and aggregate balances of the affected accounts as of the effective date and all subsequent dates.
Additional Information: The back-value date is not limited to the current period. It can be in the prior period or even in a period from a prior year.
Maintain Averages for Summary Accounts
If you use summary accounts, and choose to enable average balance processing, General Ledger will maintain average, as well as standard, balances for your summary accounts. General Ledger automatically updates your summary average balances, as well as the standard average balances. You can use summary average balances in allocations and financial reports.
On-line Inquiry
You can use the Average Balance Inquiry form to review on-line information about the average or end-of-day balance of any balance sheet account. You can view summary or detail balances, as well as drill down from your summary balances to see the detail. Also, you can customize your view of the average and end-of-day balances to show only the information you want, in the order you want it.
Standard Reports
General Ledger provides two standard average balance reports:
- Average Balance Trial Balance--displays standard and average balances for selected accounts, as well as period, quarter, and year average-to-date balances, for any as-of date you specify.
- Average Balance Audit Report--displays the detail activity used to create aggregate balances and related average balances maintained by General Ledger.
Custom Average Balance Reports
With General Ledger's Financial Statement Generator, you can design custom reports that use average balances. You can even create reports which include average and standard balances.
Financial Statement Generator allows you to define the complex financial statements you need to analyze your business, including responsibility reports for business units, profit centers, and cost centers. You may also need to prepare consolidated and consolidating reports, funds statements, and cash flow reports. With Financial Statement Generator, you can do all of this, using average balances and standard balances.
Allocations and Recurring Journal Formulas
With average balance processing enabled, you can use average balances as input to any formulas you use to create MassAllocations, MassBudgets, and recurring journals. You can use any of the three average balance types (Period, Quarter, or Year Average-to-date), as well as end-of-day balances.
Multi-Currency Accounting
General Ledger fully supports using average balances for foreign currency conversion, revaluation, and translation. General Ledger maintains average and end-of-day balances for all of your transaction currencies, as well as your functional currency. Using these features, you can:
- Convert foreign currency amounts in journal entries to your functional currency at the time of entry. Converted values are factored into the computation of average balances.
- Revalue accounts which are recorded on your books in a foreign currency. Revalued balances, as well as the unrealized exchange gain or loss, are factored into the computation of average balances.
- Translate average balances from a functional currency into a reporting currency, making it possible to consolidate average balances for sets of books that do not use the same functional currency.
Consolidation
General Ledger fully supports using average balances for consolidations, including both the transactions consolidation method and the balances consolidation method. You can consolidate average balances from different sets of books, using different currencies, calendars, and charts of accounts.
See Also
Overview
Basic Business Needs
Average Balance Examples
Effective Date Handling
Set Up and Maintenance
Multi-Currency Processing
Consolidation
On-line Inquiry
Reporting
