Setting Up A Chart of Accounts

This accounting software comes from the developer complete with a construction chart of accounts. The information in this section applies only if there are plans to delete the existing chart of accounts and create a new one from scratch.

The accounting system offers the ability to design the format of a personal Chart of Accounts or to use a standard ‘prebuilt’ set of accounts. This flexibility extends to allowing account numbers of any length from one to ten digits. The convention of assigning accounts in the following manner may be used:

Or any consecutive numbering system may be used. For further information on setting up the Job Cost Control Accounts, please refer to the section entitled Setting Up Job Cost Control Accounts included with this document.

Accounts and Financial Statement Line Items

Setting up a financial statement is a two-step process. First, enter all the General Ledger Accounts. Second, create a financial statement structure by creating Financial Statement Line Items. These include Headings, Single Accounts, Master Accounts, and Totals.

Entering General Ledger Accounts

General Ledger Accounts are used to store actual financial information. They will reflect balances from transactions made though the General Ledger or any other accounting module in the system. A 30 character description may be given to each account.

Financial Statement Line Items

There are four types of Line Items. They are: Headings, Single Accounts, Master Accounts, and Totals. A 30 character description may be assigned to each Line Item.

Headings

Headings simply print a heading on the financial statement page. Headings may be designated as Page headings, Centered headings or Left Justified headings.

Page Headings

The first Line Item on the page tells the printing program to form feed to a new page. The description of this Line Item will print in the center at the top of the page. This Line Item is usually used to display information like the name of statement, company name, date, etc.

Centered Headings

This prints the same as Page Heading. The only difference is that this account does not send a form feed command to the printer.

Left Justified Headings

These are used to describe sections of the statement such as Assets, Jobs in Progress, General Expenses, Owner’s Equity, etc. When printed, they print to the left side, lined up with the description of the regular General Ledger Accounts.

Single Account Line Items

This line item will print balance information for a single General Ledger account. Its description will be the same as the description of the General Ledger account it represents.

Master Account Line Items

This line item will be displayed on the Financial Statement and can contain any number of Single Account Line Items. During the printing of the P&L, the balances of these Single Account Line Items are added up and the total is printed under the Master Account heading. In this case it is somewhat a totaling account but does not have any relation to totaling accounts which will be discussed later. Master Accounts are designed to make the P&L more succinct and to summarize the detail of several individual accounts that would not necessarily need to show up on the statement.

Totals

Total Line Items are used to print totals of sections or groups of sections on the statement. When entering a totaling account, the other Line Items that should be included in this total may be selected

Each Total Line Item can be tabbed to the right on the Balance Sheet report to improve report clarity.

Hidden Variables

There are hidden variables that will provide some useful and timesaving features. These variables are entered into the description field of the framework account. The variable itself will be replaced with the feature described below.