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Suggestion: Read about planning and setting up summary accounts before you set up your chart of accounts. See: Planning Your Summary Accounts.

   To set up your chart of accounts:

1. Define value sets. Value sets determine the attributes of your account segments such as the segment length, whether to require a segment value, value alignment, and value security.

See: Defining Value Sets

2. Define your account structure. Indicate how many separate segments your account will have, and for each segment, enter a name, sequence number, and an associated value set.

Suggestion: Plan your account segment order carefully. Once you freeze your account structure, it is difficult to change the segment order without causing problems in other areas.

• Designate one of your segments as the natural account segment and another as the balancing segment.

• Use dependent account segments when you want a "context-sensitive" segment whose values have different meanings when you combine them with different values of another segment.

See: Designing Your Accounting Flexfield

Note: If you plan to use General Ledger for basic project tracking, define a project segment. See: Project Tracking in General Ledger.

3. Define rollup groups to create summary accounts whose summary balances you can review. You assign parent segment values to rollup groups.

See: Defining Rollup Groups

4. Define your account segment values. If you plan on defining summary accounts or reporting hierarchies, you must define parent values as well as child or detail values.

You can set up hierarchy structures for your segment values. Define parent values that include child values. You can view a segment value's hierarchy structure as well as move the child ranges from one parent value to another.

See: Defining Segment Values

5. Define Security Rules to restrict user access to certain account segment values.

See: Defining Security Rules

6. Define cross-validation rules to control the account combinations you want General Ledger to allow. For example, you may decide that your sales cost centers, 600 to 699, should only enter amounts to product sales accounts, 4000 to 4999.

See: Defining Your Cross-Validation Rules

7. Define or enable descriptive flexfields.

See: Defining Descriptive Flexfields for General Ledger

8. Define account shorthand aliases to speed entry of account segment values. If you enable shorthand alias flexfield entry when you define your account structure, then you can define aliases, or codes, which stand for complete or partial accounts.

See: Defining Shorthand Aliases

9. Define summary accounts to create and maintain summary balances for quick reporting and online inquiry.

See: Defining Summary Accounts

10. Create account combinations.

If you allow dynamic insertion, you can create new account combinations automatically as you use them during journal entry. If you do not allow dynamic insertion, define new account combinations manually in the GL Accounts window.

You can define new account combinations or disable existing account combinations at any time.

See: Defining Accounts

See Also

Defining Accounts

Defining Descriptive Flexfields for General Ledger

Defining Summary Accounts

Defining Value Sets

Defining Key Flexfields

Defining Segment Values

Defining Rollup Groups

Defining Your Cross-Validation Rules

Defining Shorthand Aliases

Overview of Shorthand Flexfield Entry