Understanding Accounting in PeopleSoft Expenses

This chapter discusses:

• PeopleSoft Expenses accounting.

• Employee privilege templates.

• Header level default accounting.

• Expense transaction line default accounting.

• Default accounting change functionality.

PeopleSoft Expenses Accounting

The parameters that you establish for your general ledger business unit, organizational defaults, user defaults, and expense types all play a part in how accounting functions within PeopleSoft Expenses.

Expense reports and cash advances generate ledger entries for distribution of funds to and from specific accounts. Expense reports contain accounting defaults at the header level that have been derived from the employee's profile. These defaults can be modified if the employee is authorized to do so. The defaults in the header, in conjunction with accounting information from the expense type, are then used to generate distributions for each expense line added to the report. Travel authorizations support the same defaulting mechanism for distributions. These distributions are not used to generate accounting entries but can be used to record budget checking activity. Cash advances contain a distribution formed by combining general ledger ChartFields for the employee with the Account ChartField identified on the Accounting Entry Template for PeopleSoft Expenses to form the accounting entries recording cash transactions in the general ledger.

Transaction distribution lines can be maintained by employees or authorized approvers. Employee access to and modification of distribution actuals can be enabled or disabled by either business unit or expense processing role.

Accounting Parameter Setup

You establish parameters for your general ledger business unit, organizational defaults, user defaults, and expense types using these pages:

Accounting Defaults and Accounting Details

Access the default accounting ChartFields for travel authorizations and expense reports from these pages:

Employee Privilege Templates

Employee privilege templates enable you to determine whether employees have access to view or change accounting ChartFields on expense report, time report, and travel authorization transactions. Employee templates are optional and if they are not defined, employees have access to all ChartFields that appear on expense reports, time reports, and travel authorizations.

An employee privilege template can be created for each transaction type and associated with a business unit or a user role. The employee privilege template affects expense transactions that you access through the Employee Self-Service navigation and determines access to accounting defaults, accounting details, and user defaults

When you create expense transactions, PeopleSoft Expenses determines what accounting information to use and determines whether the accounting information can be viewed or modified.

When creating an expense report, a time report, or a travel authorization:

1. The system checks the employee profile first to determine whether a role is designated.

2. If a role is designated, the system checks the role to determine whether an employee privilege template is associated with the role.

3. If a role is not designated, the system checks to determine whether an employee privilege template is associated with the general ledger business unit that is associated with the employee.

When the employee privilege template is determined, the system uses the employee privilege template to determine the employee access to accounting defaults and accounting details.

For more information about setting up employee privilege templates,

See Maintaining Employee Privilege Templates.

See Also

Defining a PeopleSoft Expenses Business Unit

Defining PeopleSoft Expenses Processing Roles

Maintaining Employee Organizational Data

Header Level Default Accounting

When you create travel authorizations or expense reports, PeopleSoft Expenses populates the reports with accounting defaults. The accounting defaults for travel authorizations or expense reports consist of general ledger accounting, project accounting information, and allocation percentages. Depending on the Default Accounting value for the transaction that is associated with the business unit or employee's role, you may have access to view and change the accounting defaults. The Default Accounting field is defined on the Employee Privilege Template page for the expense report, time report, and travel authorization transactions.

PeopleSoft Expenses obtains general ledger accounting ChartField values from the employee profile and populates new travel authorizations and expense reports with these values at the header level. The general ledger business unit (GL BU) is required for expense processing. Your human resource system updates the PeopleSoft Expenses employee profiles with the default general ledger accounting ChartField values; however, you can add or change these default values on the Employee Profile - Organizational Data page providing that you have authorized access. The travel authorization and expense report default accounting for the distribution plan includes project defaults if they are set up in the employee profile.

Expense Transaction Line Default Accounting

Expense transaction lines obtain their initial distribution details from the accounting defaults, which are defined at the header level for expense reports and travel authorizations. When you add an expense transaction line, PeopleSoft Expenses determines the accounting setup for the selected expense type and populates the accounting distribution default lines with:

• The GL business unit from the accounting distribution plan at the expense report header level.

• Project fields at the expense report header level, including the project split percentages.

• Account and, if required, alternate account ChartField information from the expense types table (based on the expense type and billing type combination).

• Other ChartFields from the expense types table, if they exist, or ChartFields from the accounting defaults at the expense report header level.

Default Accounting Change Functionality

When you create travel authorizations or expense reports and add expense transaction lines, PeopleSoft Expenses copies the accounting defaults from the distribution plan at the header level down to each transaction distribution line. If you change the accounting defaults at the header level after you add expense transaction lines, PeopleSoft Expenses changes the previously entered transaction distribution lines to reflect the new accounting defaults. However, if you change any of the ChartFields directly in an expense line distribution (accounting detail) and then modify the accounting defaults at the header level, the changes to the accounting defaults will not appear in the expense line distribution that you manually modified. When you modify a default distribution, you override the default and PeopleSoft Expenses sets a flag on the distribution to preserve your entry.

For example:

1. Access the Expense Report Entry page to create an expense report.

2. Access the Expense Report - Accounting Defaults page and verify or change the accounting default for DeptID to 41000.

3. Return to the Expense Report Entry page and enter three expense transaction lines:

   1. Air travel

   2. Hotel

   3. Meals

4. Verify on the Expense Report - Accounting Detail page that PeopleSoft Expenses created three accounting lines using DeptID 41000.

5. Access the Expense Report - Accounting Detail page and change the Hotel transaction line accounting detail DeptID from 41000 to 42000.

6. Access the Expense Report - Accounting Defaults page and change the DeptID from 41000 to 43000.

7. Return to the Expense Report Entry page and enter a fourth expense transaction line for Automobile Rental.

8. Verify on the Expense Report - Accounting Detail page that the DeptID for air travel, meals, and car rental is 43000; the DeptID for hotel is 42000.