Chart of Accounts

When you open the Chart of Accounts window, through the Ledger menu, you see the existing chart of accounts supplied with JobBag.

If you choose to use this chart and amend it to suit your own purposes, then most of the work in setting up the chart is already completed – saving you a lot of time. New accounts can be created, other accounts modified, and surplus accounts deleted.

In addition, having a chart already in the system helps to demonstrate the types of accounts, and how they interact with each other.

Important: Now is the time to ensure you are familiar with the different account types as detailed in the section on Account types.

  Sorting: By clicking on the column heading you can sort by code or name or type or report or sign or reset

The information held in each column is:

•  Code         Account number or code, identifying the account.

           Note: Using naming conventions and grouping account number intelligently helps make your chart of accounts more usable.

•  Name     Name of the account.
•  Type         There are a number of account types. For more information, refer to section on Account Types.
•  Report    Each account appears on one of three standard reports. They can also be included in user-defined reports.
•  Sign         Bank, Posting and Total accounts have a natural sign. This determines whether positive amounts posted to that account show         up as debits or credits.

           Note: Assets and expenses normally have a debit natural sign. Liabilities, Equity and Revenue normally have a credit natural                 sign.

•  Reset    ‘Cum’ means the account is cumulative and the totals carry forward to the next period.

       ‘Prd’ means the account is reset to zero at the end of each period.

Additional Fields

When an account is selected, these fields reflect additional information about the selected account.

•  Add-to            Every Posting account and Total account must add into other accounts to create a hierarchy of totals. Eventually                 all accounts add into the Ledger Balancing account which always has a total of zero.
•  Pair to account:        If a paired account is created, it either appears in your financial statements as a liability if the account is negative                 or as an asset if the account is positive.
•  F/C Unreal gain/loss:    this is used when foreign currency is used
•  Percent of account:    When ‘show percentage figures’ is selected in a financial report, the selected account displays as a percentage of                 the account that is set as its percentage account.
•  Supplementary         An account can add into several supplementary accounts. This allows new totals to be created and a different                 view of your accounts to be created.

PARAMETERS

Before progressing too much further, you need to check how the Chart of Accounts is currently set so you can determine if changes need to be made to suit your business.

Fields and Functions Refer below for information about the fields making up the Chart Parameters window.

•  Account code format and Length of code - Controls the number of digits and the highest and lowest numbers that can be used in the account code.

       TIPs: You can have account codes with 2 decimal places by setting the lowest format as 0000.00 and the highest to 9999.99.

          The minimum length cannot be greater than the lowest number and the maximum length cannot be more than the highest number. In practice             these settings can be used to ensure that account numbers adhere to a standard format.
          All accounts that you create, once you have made the change, MUST have a number that matches the specified format or the system does not                 accept the change.

•  Balancing - Double entry accounting requires that for each debit, there must be an equal amount of credit. Each transaction posted into JobBag has that balance. The parts of the transaction are added to the various posting or bank accounts in the Chart of Accounts, those in turn are added to total accounts. All total accounts add into other higher-level total accounts, until everything adds into the Ledger Balancing account. The total of accounts must always equal zero.

       Note: JobBag structures the chart so that there is a Ledger Balancing Account at the ‘head’ of the chart of accounts –seen when you print an                 Add-To-Tree report.

•  Default reset - Balance of all ‘period to date totaling’ posting accounts is reset to zero when the end-of-period is run and the balance transferred to the Default Reset account. The only ‘Prd’ accounts not added to this account are those with a specific reset account defined.

           Note: When you are creating period to date posting accounts, if you do not nominate a reset account, the Default Reset Account is used when                     resetting the balance on the account. If you change the structure of the chart you may need to change the default reset account.

•  Rounding error - Rounding cents are added to/subtracted from the rounding error account nominated here. These amounts are added to the nominated account for reporting purposes only. The actual account values are unchanged.

       Note: Rounding can be to various levels; whole dollars, tens of dollars, hundreds of dollars, or thousands of dollars. In each case a value that is half             way between, or less, is rounded down and greater than half is rounded up.

Map Control Accounts

Note:    For information on the Map Control accounts window refer to section on Map Control accounts