Account Numbering

The system supports a 6 digit primary account number and a 6 digit sub-account number.  The system also supports a 6 digit division and a 6 digit department.  The account number and sub-account number are contained in each Account Description record. The division and departments in which an account can be posted to depend on the account period structure that has been created for each Account Description record.

The Sub-account number field in the account description record is used for organizing accounts so that they can be subtotaled at the primary account level during reporting.  All primary accounts should be created with a sub-account number of 0, but additional sub-accounts are optional.

Travel expense can be used to illustrate the above rule:  You may have different types of travel expenses including airfare, hotels, rental cars, meals, etc.  In some circumstances you may wish to see just the total travel expense on a financial statement and in other cases you may wish to see the individual components making up the total travel expense account balance.  To accomplish this, you could create the following records in the Account Description file.

750-0 Travel Expense

750-1 Travel Expense – Airfare

750-2 Travel Expense – Hotel

750-3 Travel Expense-Rental Car

750-4 Travel Expense – Meals

In the above example, postings would be made to the sub-accounts as accounts payable invoices and travel expense reports are processed.  The 750-0 account would not be used for posting and could be set to inactive status to ensure it was not used by mistake.

The above structure would allow you to print one total travel expense total when printing a consolidated financial statement or to print the individual travel expense accounts when producing a detailed income statement.

As new Account Description records are created, the sub-account number defaults to 0.  If an account is being created that will not have sub-accounts, only the record with the 0 sub-account needs to exist.  If an account is created with a sub-account other than zero, then an account with a sub-account zero must also exist.

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Account Description