AM-D  Enter General Ledger Departments

Purpose of Program

Departments can be set up to allow you to track the financial performance of a subgroup within your company.  The department code is a four character suffix attached to the end of the GL account, separated by a hyphen.

If you choose to use departments as profit center divisions, you would only need to add department-based accounts for income and expense type accounts.  Asset, liability, and owner's equity accounts are normally not tracked by departments.  This program allows you to create a departmentalized account structure for the account types that you specify.  It also allows you to delete a department that will no longer be used but you need to journalize out all amounts prior to deleting the department and use AM-I  Consolidate General Ledger Detail  for the department in question.

GL account codes with departments can be entered individually through AM-C  Enter General Ledger Accounts, but this program allows departments to be generated automatically by GL type (assets, liabilities, owners equity, income, expense), thus saving a great deal of data entry.

NOTE: Departmental accounting is generally used for income and expense accounts only.  Automatic postings to balance sheet accounts only go to one default account/department, so if you try to use departments on the balance sheet side of the ledger, you will have to manually adjust balances to different departments.  It is best to confine the use of departments to income statement accounts.

When you create a new department, your chart of accounts will include an additional account entry for all GL account types you select.  Selection of which account to departmentalize can be limited by account type; you can also use an existing department as a template.

Field Descriptions

Use which existing department as TEMPLATE

If you have already set up a department that has a close resemblance to the new department you want to create, you can simply type in the existing department here.  If you enter nothing in this field, your new department will be based on the complete chart of accounts.

Code of the NEW department to create

Type in a new department code.

Clear budget values?

If you answer Y, the budget values in the template department will not be transferred to the new department.  If you wish to change most of the budget values for this new department, enter Y.

Which account types should be transferred?

If the department you are creating does not need to track liabilities, owner's equity or assets, you can enter N for each of these to avoid transferring account types that do not apply.

General Program Operation

If you are setting up a department for the first time, the template department is the chart of accounts for your company as a whole.  After you have created the new department, you should use GL-B  Enter/Print General Journal Trxns to enter the beginning balances or to transfer funds from the original non-department based account to your newly created department-based account.

If you wish to use departments in a more limited way, you can simply add a department extension to an existing account and save the record.  You will still have your general account number without a department as well as the new account with the department specification.