General Ledger

The Micronet General Ledger (MGL) has been designed as a fully integrated general ledger and financial planning tool that can be used standalone, or in conjunction with other Micronet applications. The main components of MGL are...

MGL can import/export data with many third party software applications such as spreadsheets, word processors and/or graphical presentation programs.

Chart Of Accounts
The first task in setting up a new general ledger system is defining the chart of accounts that will be used to account for the business transactions in your organisation. MGL has a powerful, yet easy to use chart of accounts structure that provides completely customised balance sheet and profit and loss reports, as well as other standard financial reports.

The numbering sequence of the Chart of Accounts is flexible where your Assets, Liabilities, Shareholders Funds, Revenue, Expenses, etc can have any numbering sequence within a 3-7 digit account range.

The masking structure of the Chart of Accounts is user definable to enable MGL to be customised to suit a diverse range of companies. The default setting generally used being a DD-AAAAA-SS account code structure where DD = the Department
(0-4 digits), AAAAA = the Account Code
(3-7 digits) and SS = Optional Sub Account (0-4 digits). The minimum configuration can be a simple chart of accounts with an AAA sequence of account codes with no departments and no sub accounts. The maximum could be a sophisticated chart with a structure of DDDD-AAAAAAA-SSSS.

Departments
A departmental breakdown of your chart of accounts is optional. Typical departments could be setup your Balance Sheet, Administration, Sales Division A, Sales Division B, Manufacturing, Service and a Total Section for combining all of your figures.

Subsidiary Accounts
If you require a further analysis of your accounts, (for example, motor vehicle expenses further categorised into lease, fuel, repairs and maintenance) then the subsidiary ledger account mask can be used. Subsidiary ledger accounts are optional and transparent.

When setting up the Chart of Accounts, accounts are defined as either Balance Sheet or Profit and Loss type accounts to determine their placement in the General Ledger. These types of accounts are treated differently in the reports and at year-end.

“HEADER” and “TOTAL” type accounts categorise, and sub-total groups of accounts for reporting purposes. The Chart of Accounts is actually the primary report writer for the general ledger system. A report generator for ad-hoc reports is also included to ensure that all other financial reports can be extracted from the general ledger.

When adding new departments, accounts from another department can be globally copied to the new department, allowing easy mass-maintenance of your system.

A “PAIR” account arrangement can be set up between accounts so that assets and liabilities are shown in the correct part of the balance sheet. For example, a “PAIR” arrangement between the Bank Account and the Bank Overdraft account will ensure that at the end of the month, the bank account balance shows in the correct part of the balance sheet.

MGL is designed as an "open 24 month" system. A 24 month calendar which can be customised means that 24 months of account information detail may be contained on-line for access for reporting on any period, be it current period, prior current-year periods or previous year periods.

A “period of grace” feature allows postings past the end of year. For example, if your financial calendar has twelve periods, then period thirteen to period twenty-four is called the “period of grace”. This time allows you to complete the end of year processing, while still being able to process the new year transactions.

General ledger transaction postings (journals) default to the current period, however nominated journals may be posted to any prior future period.
Appropriation account relationships can also be added so that a nominated percentage of a particular account can be apportioned to another account for reporting purposes, without the need to use journal entries to effect these allocations. For example, each month you may wish to appropriate total overhead expenses to each revenue department, based on a predetermined percentage. This can be set up to occur automatically each month.

Percentage accounts allow a percentage of a nominated account to show against another account. For example, wages expenses as a percentage of total sales.

REPORTING
The General Ledger Master File is the default report writer where accounts are defined with headings, indenting, underlining, lines “before” and “after” each account, to create customised Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Reports.

General Ledger Transaction Postings (journals) default to the current period, however, journals may be posted to any prior future or period.

All journals are prepared in batches, off-line. At any time a verification report can be produced detailing the transactions in any current batches.

All journal batches can be edited prior to posting. At this stage accounts, narration, references and amounts can be changed. Journals posted via the “external file” from subsidiary ledgers cannot be edited prior to posting. This is to ensure the integrity between these subsidiary ledgers and the general ledger.

A running balance of the journal batch is displayed on the screen while entering journal details.

Journal batches can be temporarily closed at any time, irrespective of the balance of the batch. Journals can only be posted to the general ledger. However, when the batch is in balance. The general ledger will always stay in balance.

A journal batch may be a “normal batch” (non-reversing) or an “accrual batch”.

An “accrual batch” is one that will be reversed in the following period. When an “accrual batch” is posted, the system will automatically create a new batch where each line transaction is reversed and the period number on the batch is incremented by one.

As the batch is processed through to the general ledger, an audit report is produced and the journal batch is deleted, ensuring that the journal cannot be double posted.

A separate Standing Journal program allows standing journal “templates” (or masters) to be prepared in advance. These can be either normal standing journals or accrual type.

Standing journal templates can contain account number details, references, descriptions, and/or amounts. If no amounts are entered into the standing journal template, the system will prompt you at the time of posting the standing journal to optionally enter an amount. Zero amounts against accounts on standing journals are not posted.

For “payment” type transactions, cheques can be printed on to customised pre-printed cheque or cheque with remittance stationery.

Each active chart of accounts record can have up to 3 budgets assigned to it. Any one of these can then be utilised in the production of budget vs actual type reporting. Typically the setting of 3 budgets could be budget 1=the original done at the beginning of the year, budget 2=the one your line managers are working to and 3=a "what if" budget that can be altered and customised throughout the financial year.

MANUAL BUDGET DATA ENTRY
Amounts may be entered for each of your 24 periods against each account budget. (Remember there are 24 periods). The budget amounts can be changed at any time.

12 MONTHS SIMULTANEOUSLY
An initial monthly budget amount may be entered for an account and that amount can then be applied to either the first 12 months or the second 12 months or both. For example, your budgeted insurance cost may be $250 per month. You need only enter this amount once and it can be applied to each nominated period.

AN ANNUAL BUDGET, WITH A PERCENTAGE TO APPLY FOR EACH MONTH
With certain accounts, it is easier to work
can be applied to any number of accounts with an annual amount, and then divide that amount over the year, according to a pre-determined percentage.
For example, your budgeted sales for the year might be $2.5m, to be divided over the year according to the same pattern last year, e.g. 8% in July, 12% in August, 10% in September, etc.

The “pattern” is set up in the system as a budget matrix and this matrix can be applied to any number of accounts.

A STARTING BUDGET, WITH PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS EACH MONTH
With this option a starting budget amount can be entered. For example, $50,000 in sales for July, and then automatically increase (or decrease) each subsequent month, according to a pre-determined percentage. The percentage increase/ decrease is set up as another budget matrix, which also may be applied to any number of accounts.

IMPORTED FROM A SPREADSHEET IN ASCII FORMAT
Budget information prepared in a spreadsheet program may be imported into MGL as budget data. The only requirement is that the spreadsheet program needs to be able to save the information as ASCII Text with a comma-delimited format.

Budget information may be viewed on the screen in the general ledger account inquiry program, printed as part of the Profit and Loss Report, or printed as a 12-month budget report.

Throughout the Micronet software you have a "partial keysearch" facility that enables the searching for accounts much easier and faster. For example, entering "10-12" would display all accounts commencing with that account number sequence, from 10-12000-00 onwards. Using the arrow keys, you are able to select the account you wish to enquire on.

Also possible is the ability to partially keysearch and "mask" on the account description. For example a search for any code with "FUEL" in part of the description.

ACCOUNT SUMMARY INQUIRY
The initial GL account inquiry screen shows a full summary of the initial periods 0-12, with periods 13-24 (the periods of grace) appearing on the next screen. For both month-to-date and year-to-date the actual balance is shown, along with the budget balance and variances.

By selecting one of the periods 1-24 you can then "drill down" to the actual transaction data.

SECURITY ACCESS
User access can be tailored to specific menu selections for programs and to specific reports if necessary.

FINANCIAL REPORTS
The user definable chart of accounts provides a high degree of flexibility when defining your financial reports.

The main financial reports - the Balance Sheet and the Profit and Loss reports, are defined as part of the General Ledger Master File set-up. Special “HEADING” and “TOTAL” type accounts can be used for captions and totaling.

The financial reporting hierarchy defines the reporting levels in your organisation and determines the summarisation of your departmental Profit and Loss reports.

All information produced in the Balance Sheet and the Profit and Loss Report can be customised both by the content of each row and each column.

Most common reports and screen layouts are provided with MGL. Each of these can be customised by you. The default report/screen layout can be selected at runtime or a specific “customised” report can be selected to print or display.