Moving or Merging Account Balances
A move operation transfers balances from one or more source accounts to one or more target accounts. In the Mass Maintenance Workbench window, you use one account specification each to define the source accounts and the target accounts.
For example, assume your account has a cost center segment that you use to represent operations centers. Assume also that you have just closed one of your centers (#683) and want another center (#357) to absorb center #683's inventory and operations. For accounting and reporting purposes, you now want center #683's account balances reflected in center #357's accounts. You can do this with a move operation. Assuming you use a four segment account, with cost center as the second segment, the source and target specifications in the Mass Maintenance Workbench window are:
Source specification: . 683 . . Target specification: . 357 . .
Note that you only have to specify a value for the cost center segment. By leaving the other three segments blank, your move/merge operation will move all account balances for all values of the other segments when the cost center value is 683.
A merge operation transfers balances from multiple source accounts into one or more target accounts. In the Mass Maintenance Workbench window, multiple account specifications are used to define the source accounts while the same account specification is used to define the target accounts.
For example, assume that you want to merge the balances from three costs centers (575, 683, and 937) into one (357). The source and target specifications in the Mass Maintenance Workbench window are:
Source specification: . 575 . . Target specification: . 357 . .
Source specification: . 683 . . Target specification: . 357 . .
Source specification: . 937 . . Target specification: . 357 . .
Business Rules
You cannot move/merge across sets of books.
You cannot move/merge across balancing segment values. For example, if your balancing segment is company, you cannot move balances from one company to another.
You cannot move/merge across financial statement categories. For example, you cannot move a balance sheet account balance to an income statement account. You can move/merge within categories, except for equity accounts. For example, you can move/merge an asset balance to a liability account.
You cannot move/merge budget or encumbrance balances.
You cannot move or merge the balances of purged accounting periods. However, since current balances are based on the purged periods, General Ledger will adjust the quarter-to-date, year-to-date, project-to-date, period-average-to-date, quarter-average-to-date, and year-average-to-date balances of your source and target accounts in the earliest unpurged period.
Move/merge operations will not update the accounts and account ranges used in any General Ledger definitions, such as recurring journals, mass allocations, consolidation mappings, and summary accounts.
You cannot use move/merge with General Ledger's dual currency accounting feature. If you need both move/merge and dual currency functionality, use General Ledger's multiple reporting currencies feature instead of dual currency.
If any source accounts have historical rates assigned, you must update or create the historical rates for the target accounts. The rates will not be updated or created during the move/merge.
If you have budgetary control enabled in your set of books, funds checking and reservation does not validate move/merge adjustments to your source and target accounts.
Special rules for net income accounts (average balance processing):
- You cannot move/merge into an existing net income account.
- You cannot merge into a new net income account from more than one source account.
- When moving net income accounts:
- You must move the net income account for all balancing segment values in a set of books.
- The target account cannot have an existing standard or average balance. This includes zero balances.
- The target account and its natural account segment value cannot allow detail posting.
Additional Information: After you move a net income account's balance, the source account will no longer be treated as a net income account by General Ledger. Instead, the target net income account replaces the source net income account. The source account is then treated as any other account.
If you subsequently reverse a move operation that involved a net income account, the target net income account used in the original move operation cannot be used as a target net income account in any other move/merge operation.
What Move/Merge Does
If no errors are encountered, a move/merge will perform the following steps before it finishes processing:
- Create target accounts that don't already exist
- Calculate balances to be moved or merged
- Calculate amounts to adjust quarter-to-date, year-to-date, project-to-date, period-average-to-date, quarter-average-to-date, and year-average-to-date balances
- Move/merge the calculated balances
- Create move/merge audit journals
- Produce the Mass Maintenance Execution Report
Translated Balances
After a successful move/merge operation, translated balances will be out of date. You must run General Ledger's Translation program to update your translated balances.
See Also
Defining a Move/Merge Request
Reversing a Move/Merge
Purging Move/Merge Tables