Understanding Recurring Journal Entries
Recurring journal entries allow you to redistribute amounts in one or more business units to accounts in other business units. You can redistribute amounts based on a fixed amount, percentage, or units. For example, you can distribute expenses that are categorized as overhead to individual departments.
You can create a recurring journal entry using the fixed amount method if you know that the amount of the journal entry does not change. You enter the journal entry once, and then each month (or other desired frequency) the system creates another entry with the new general ledger date.
You can also set up a recurring journal entry that is based on percentages rather than a fixed amount. For example, if you know that a piece of equipment is used by several business units, you can distribute the expenses associated with the equipment, such as repairs and depreciation to each business unit, based on the percentage of time that the business unit used the equipment. Each month, the system calculates the distribution of the repairs and depreciation expenses based on the percentages that you set up.
A third method of setting up a recurring journal entry is the units method. If you know how many units to specify for an account, you can set up each account with the number of units and the system distributes the amount that you specify based on the units entered. For example, if you want to allocate the administrative costs for the payroll department to various departments based on head count in each department, you can set up a recurring entry with units of head count in each account. When the system calculates the distribution, it calculates a percentage based on the head count in a business unit divided by the total head count and multiply that percentage by the amount in the account to be allocated.