General Ledger

General Ledger screenshot

Maintain your chart of accounts, create budgets, make journal entries and manage tax and currencies.

Unified ledger accounting – on demand

When double entry book keeping was first invented in the 15th century, the originators probably began with one paper based book to document their transactions. As businesses became larger, multiple books were necessary, particularly to manage customers and vendors. The general ledger book was ticked and tied to the other books of the business.

When computers came on to the scene, software developers automated the multi-book system in the form of software modules. The separate modules all updated the “general” ledger by posting summary entries into the GL, which needed to be reconciled every accounting period. This was a step forward, replacing the pencil, mechanical adding machines and magnetic stripe ledger cards in some businesses. But despite all the advances in technology since the original batch/punch card based software applications, accounting software is still fundamentally developed the same way – until the single ledger accounting system arrived on the scene from FinancialForce.com.

In some ways, the single ledger automates accounting in a pure and simple way as it was originally intended – one simple book. Rather than automating a multi-book system that was essentially a workaround, FinancialForce.com has created a single system without the all the entanglements and interfacing complications. More »

This means functions such as Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and General Ledger are all contained in a single, self balancing set of books. In essence, the whole system serves as a General Ledger, but without the nonsensical summary entries and out of balance conditions.

This unique single system design eliminates time lags, sub-ledgers, data fragmentation, reconciling and unnecessary integration between subsystems. In contrast to batch or waterfall-styled ERP solutions, it ensures that your business data is consistent, always in balance and always up to date. Changes can efficiently be made in ONE area without: losing control, creating reporting problems or increasing the risk of non-compliance. This is because data is held within a single system – in one accounting application – not in multiple sub-modules and sub-systems. FinancialForce Accounting is guaranteed to be in balance.

From a “General” perspective, the data in the single ledger sits in two primary forms:

  1. balanced documents and transactions and
  2. summary balances.

Transactions always remain intact just as the double entry originators imagined. Summary balances are also always available (at many levels) to indicate where you stand on an account by account basis. Summary balances allow you to perform single record reads, say to compare an expense account to a budget, without having to chug through all the detail transactions. The single ledger then, is a real-time, GAAP blessed financial repository which forms the basis for financial and management reporting. This capability, combined with the flexible chart of accounts described in the analysis section, provide the most powerful reporting and financial intelligence system available on the market today.

The ingenious simplicity and unassuming power of the single ledger is a financial manager’s dream, especially compared to the traditional multi-module approach provided by other software suppliers still today.

Key features

  • Unified, single ledger design
  • Completely flexible chart of accounts structure
  • Analysis of costs and income by multiple user-defined dimensions, such as by project, job or region
  • Multi-currency and multi-company transaction handling
  • Correct errors by raising an adjustment or canceling journal
  • Transfer costs between companies or business units by raising an intercompany journal
  • Perform accruals by raising a reversing journal
  • Set budget amounts for each accounting period
  • Automatic calculation of cumulative, year-to-date budgets for each period
  • Compare actual period values and year-to-date values to the budget for the same period
  • Analyze the variance between actual period balance and the budget for the same period

Accruals

If you want a journal to automatically reverse itself, you can create and post a reversing journal to accrue for that expense on the general ledger. This is a journal that automatically reverses itself in a subsequent period. For example, you may have incurred an expense towards the end of a period, but the invoice has not yet arrived. The invoice and the reversing journal will effectively cancel each other out, leaving the expense in the original period where it was actually incurred.

Revenue recognition

An income schedule allows you to spread the revenue from a single sales invoice across a range of accounting periods, so the values in the general ledger accurately reflect the income due for each period. A single sales invoice can be associated with one or more income schedules, at the invoice or the line item level.

Budgeting

FinancialForce Accounting enables you to track the variance of actual period balances against budget.

The budgets and balance feature automatically calculates cumulative and year-to-date budgets for each period, compares actual period values and year-to-date values to the budget for the same period, and analyzes the variance between actual period balance and the budget for the same period.

Products home icon Read more about FinancialForce Accounting on our products page »

General Ledger screenshot

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General Ledger screenshot