OASIS Nominal Ledger

Transcription

1 BEAVER SOFTWARE SYSTEMS LTD Open Accounting Software for Independent Schools School Management Software OASIS Nominal Ledger Last Revision: August 2011 Beaver Software Systems Ltd. 32 Glencairn Drive, London W5 1RT Phone Fax

2 Table of Contents Overview... 1 Definition of terms... 2 Nominal Account... 2 Division... 2 Department... 2 Expense... 2 Sort Code... 2 Cash Book... 2 Petty Cash... 2 Transaction... 3 Batch... 3 Projects... 3 Discussion of Account Headings... 3 Setting up... 4 Nominal Options... 4 User Name... 5 Transaction numbers... 5 Period Dates... 6 Control Accounts... 7 Account usage... 9 New Files... 9 Click OK to promptscodes Codes Nominal Account Codes Bank Codes VAT Codes Project Codes Payment and Receipt Codes Recalculate Trial Balance Period Closure Setting Up - doing things in the right order Accounts Nominal Accounts Entering A New Account Finding Existing Accounts Adding Notes to an account Amending and Deleting Accounts Viewing Balances Setting budgets Setting Current Year Budgets Next Years Budgets Previous Years Budgets Setting Budgets Globally Global Account Creation Listing Accounts Transactions Journals Journals Batch Starting a new batch Entering items in the batch Importing Items Amending or deleting an item in the batch Viewing and printing an open batch Amending batch controls Closing a batch Deleting a batch C:\BEAVERDOCS\Current Manuals\Lewines\NLREF doc

3 Table of Contents Reversing a batch Creating a Template for Future use Self Reversing Batches Accruals Entering items in the batch Prepayments Reversing Accruals/Prepayments Reports Nominal reports Trial Balance Viewing the Trial Balance Export Common Reporting Features Advanced Selections Saving Advanced Selections Restoring Advanced Selections Printing PDF View View Drill Down Export Accounts report Under Report Type you now have the following drop down list: Examples Reports Simple chart of accounts Current Years Budgets Transaction report Budget Report VAT Report Project Report View Account Bank Bank Payments Batch header screen Entering batch items Entering payments Amending or Deleting Item Analyse Payments Analysing VAT Analyse Nominal Accounts Analyse Project Codes Imports Receipts Produce Cheques Amend Narrative Details Bank Reconciliation Audit Batch History Transactions View Nominal Transaction View Bank transaction Management Accounts Templates Assign Accounts Setting the Columns (NSD / NSX) Printing Management Accounts Beaver Format C:\BEAVERDOCS\Current Manuals\Lewines\NLREF doc

4 Table of Contents Excel Management Accounts Management Account Template Creating an Export format.nsx Management Account Fields Exporting from Beaver Setting Up Excel Vlookup Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Year End Copy Year End Opening Trial Balance for new year Nominal Ledger Bank Purging Backup Bank Purge File Fix User Definable Reports Setting up format files Saving Format files Codes which may be used in account reports Codes which may be used in Trial Balances Codes which may be used in Transaction Reports Fields used for account information Fields used for transaction information Fields used in Bank Report Imports Importing NL Accounts Importing Transactions Importing Budget Data File Health NL Transaction data check Bank data check NL Transaction act/date validity NL entries since transaction C:\BEAVERDOCS\Current Manuals\Lewines\NLREF doc

5 Nominal Manual Overview Overview The Beavers Nominal module contains the Nominal Ledger and Cash Book programs. The Nominal Ledger programs enable you to analyse your business across different Nominal Headings. Transactions may be entered directly into the Nominal Ledger by using Journals, or may be entered via other systems, such as Purchase Ledger, Sales Ledger, Payroll etc. The Bank programs allow you to enter payments and receipts which affect any of your bank accounts. These are automatically entered into the Nominal Ledger at the same time. The nominal programs enable you to produce a wide range of reports, including Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss report, Trial Balance and other specialist management reports. The Bank reports produce Bank and Statements reports and a Bank Reconciliation facility against statements. The programs are accessed by using the menu options within the OASIS program. Some of the menu options have a menu of further options. Each of the options is described briefly in this section and then in detail below. Nominal Accounts allows you to set up Nominal Accounts and Budgets Bank contains all the programs relating to the running of the cash book - entering payments and receipts, printing bank reports and doing bank reconciliations. Journals allow you to enter journals, accruals and prepayments. Reports provide a variety of printed reports such as account listings, trial balance, detailed account reports. It also allows you to view the account details, including transactions and balances on the screen. The reports sub-menu includes a further sub-menu including - Management Reports which allows you to set up and produce special managements reports, including Profit & Loss reports and the Balance Sheet. Options contain a number of options which are set up when you first start to use the accounts, for example Bank Account details. File Health reports on possible problems in your data and should be run a minimum of once a week. Audit allows you to view transactions in detail on the screen and print audit trails. Period End allows you to run a period end procedure, either at the end of the year or at the end of any accounting period. Imports allow you to import account structures, budgets, transaction and bank details into the nominal ledger. System Options allow you to do backups of your data and restore from them. Nominal Tools is a collection of programs used to help resolve problems you may have with your data. Year End Copy takes a copy of your data, before doing the year end. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 1

6 Nominal Manual Overview NL Web Options allow you to set options for web access by Heads of Departments. This is a sub-menu including NL Web Extract, extracting data to HTML pages to upload to the internet. The Web programs are not described in this User Guide, but are described in detail in the Web Access documentation. Definition of terms Nominal Account The Nominal Account is the complete and unique description of an account that has been set up in your Nominal Ledger. Each nominal account has a code which may be made up of up to three parts, eg M/ART/1050 might represent MAIN SCHOOL ART MATERIALS. These individual parts are called the Division, Department and Expense codes. The division is normally a major division, such as between Main and Junior schools, the Department might be an actual department, and the expense the individual expense or income itself. So the same divisions, departments and expense codes will be a part of many accounts. You do not have to use all three parts of the nominal account if you do not feel it necessary. You may, for example, decide to use just the Department and Expense codes, or, for a very simple nominal ledger, just the Expense code. For more information on the different ways in which you might want to use the Division, Department and Expense codes, see the section on Discussion of Account Headings. Reports may be produced on any combination of Division, Department and Expense codes. Division This is the highest level of a nominal account coding. Typically, it may represent a major division that you will want analysis on, within the school. The maximum number of alphanumeric characters in this code is 5. Department This is normally the middle level of a nominal account. Typically, it may represent a department that you will want analysis on within a Division or the school. This might be an actual department, or may be some other type of expenditure. The maximum number of alphanumeric characters in this code is 5. Expense The expense code is the lowest level of analysis for a nominal account. It can be up to 9 alphanumeric characters. Sort Code In addition to the codes themselves each nominal account may be allocated an 11 character alphanumeric Sort code. You may use the same code for any number of nominal accounts, giving another way of grouping nominal accounts together. Most reports may be sorted either by Nominal Account or by Sort Code. Cash Book The Cash Book is the part of the system that records items going through the Bank. You may set up several Bank accounts within the system, and for each you will be able to produce a list of all items passing through that account and reconcile these against the statements you receive. Each bank account is attached to a single nominal code and all entries through the bank will update that nominal account, the bank control account. Petty Cash Petty cash is dealt with by running a separate cash book setup as a bank account for the petty cash account. Payments in and out of petty cash must then be entered through the Bank programs. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 2

7 Nominal Manual Overview Transaction A Transaction is an individual entry in the cash book or the nominal ledger. So, for example, if you write a cheque to Mr J Bloggs for typing paper you will enter a payment transaction in the cash book. This will cause two transactions to be entered in the nominal ledger - one against stationery and the other against the bank account. Each transaction has a transaction type, indicating where it originated from, and a unique transaction number for that type. Transaction numbers are generated whenever you Close a batch of transactions. Batch Transactions that you enter into the system are always entered in a Batch of transactions. A batch is simply a group of entries made at the same time. So, for example, the cheques you wrote on a single day might constitute a batch. To enter a batch you must first specify the Control Figures - the number of items in the batch and the total amount of those items. This helps to ensure you do not make mistakes when entering the items. Then you enter each item, allocating it the relevant nominal codes. However, it is only when you Close the batch that the transactions are written/posted to the cash book and nominal ledger and will appear in reports. Before you close the batch you may make Updates to the entries, you may Quit the batch and return to finish it later and you may Delete items from the batch. You may have a number of batches open at any time. Projects Whenever items are entered through the Cash Book they must be allocated to the relevant nominal codes. In addition they may be allocated a Project Code. This allows you to report on payments and receipts at a higher or lower level than the nominal codes. So you can group a number of transactions into a single project code, even though they might have a range of nominal codes. For example, a project might be a major event such as sports day, but the payments themselves might be allocated to nominal codes such as: hire of equipment, catering etc. By using the project codes in this way you can see the true cost of sports day, even though the transactions related to it may have been analysed across different nominal codes. You can also use the project codes to record things which are subdivisions of a single nominal code. Discussion of Account Headings A unique account consists of a combination of the Division code, the Department code, and the Expense code. Each of these parts of the account can have its own description which can be set up separately, and when a new account is entered, the default name will be the combination of the names of these codes. You can, of course, overwrite this. If you are making use of all three parts of the account, you may decide that you will use the different parts to signify different sections of your accounts. For example, you may decide to use the Division code to represent the different parts of the school, e.g. Prep, Main, Junior, Senior, Admin etc. You may then decide to use the Department to represent the different departments in the school, and the Expense code to represent expenses such as Energy, Stationery, Books etc. Setting up the accounts in this way means that you can easily find a required group of accounts by referring to a particular Division, Department or Expense. For example, if you wanted to report on all telephone expenses, you would just select the Expense code for telephones and produce a report on this, regardless of Division or Department. However, if you then wanted to report on the telephone costs for the Senior School, you could do the same report but now also adding the Senior School Division code. Account reports may also be accessed by account Sort Code. This Sort Code need not be unique and can be applied to any number of accounts, so that you can then produce a report grouped according to Sort Code, which doesn't necessarily reflect the ordering by account number. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 3

8 Nominal Manual Setting up A facility also exists, via the Management Reports, to group random accounts together for reporting purposes, so that even if you may not have set up your account structure ideally, you can still easily produce reports formatted in exactly the way you wish. Setting up This section covers the setting up process when you first start to use the Nominal Ledger. Before you can start to set up nominal codes and enter payments and receipts you must set up some general information, such as the dates of your accounting year, the name of the school to appear on reports etc. All of the programs you will need to use are found in the Options menu. Most of these programs are only ever used when first setting up the system. This section does not cover setting up the Nominal Accounts themselves - this is covered in the Accounts section below. Nominal Options The Nominal Ledger, Options menu contains the following programs. Each is summarised below and then described in detail over the next few pages. User Name allows you to set the Company name which will appear on reports. Transaction Numbers allow you to set Batch numbers for Nominal Ledger Journals, Accruals and Prepayments, and also the next nominal ledger Transaction number. Once set these are NOT normally amended, but are updated automatically each time an entry is made. Period Dates allow period dates to be set up. Control Accounts allow you to define which accounts will be used for Suspense, Reserves, Accruals, Prepayments and VAT, so that automatic postings will be made to those accounts whenever necessary. Account Usage depending on the complexity of your chart of accounts you may choose to use up to three levels of Nominal Coding: Division, Department and Expense. This option allows you to define how many levels you wish to use. Codes allow Division, Department and Expense codes to be defined. These can then be used for setting up Nominal Ledger accounts. It also allows the source of various dropdown list, for example Payment and VAT codes. Recalculate Trial Balance allows Nominal Balances to be checked and reset from the transaction totals. Set current sort codes for transactions where Sort codes are introduced once the ledger is already in use, this option updates any existing transactions with the corresponding Sort Codes. PL Path tells the system where to locate your Purchase Ledger files if you are using the Purchase Ledger, integrated with this Nominal Ledger. PC Identity uniquely identifies your PC to the system. This is necessary if you are using a Purchase Ledger linked to your Nominal Ledger. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 4

9 Nominal Manual Setting up File Health Options allow you to decide how you want to have your data checked automatically by the File Health Program User Name This option allows you to enter the name which will appear on the top of all reports - usually the school name. Type the School name in the User Name field using the case you wish to see on your reports as the name will appear on printouts exactly as you enter it here. When the Year End procedure has been run, it is recommended that the copy has the User Name changed to reflect the year - for example NL Click Quit to exit the screen thereby saving the entry or amendment you have made. If you want to change the name at any time make the change and then click the Quit button. This will save your new entry. If you make a mistake, go back in and amend the entry again. The User ID can be used to distinguish this Nominal Ledger from other Beaver Nominal Ledgers you may be using. It is also necessary if you have a number of other Nominal Ledgers that you will be importing from, into a main Nominal Ledger, using OASIS- Remote. Transaction numbers This program allows you to set up batch numbers for Journal, Accrual and Prepayment batches and the transaction numbers which will be used whenever transactions are entered into the Nominal Ledger. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 5

10 Nominal Manual Setting up Journals, Accruals and Pre-payments are entered in batches, which are numbered automatically. The next batch number is displayed on this screen. When you first start to use the system you may set the next batch number usually to 1. After that the batch numbers are increased automatically every time a batch is opened. It is not normally necessary to change the batch numbers here once you have started to use the system, and you should NEVER reset the batch numbers back to a number which has been used before. When you have made changes to the data on this screen click the Update button to save the changes. Click the Quit button to exit the screen. Remember to click the Update button first to save any changes you have made. Whenever entries are made into the Nominal Ledger a Transaction is created with a unique transaction number. Transactions may be entered as Journals, Accruals or Pre-payments, or posted from other systems such as the Bank, Purchase Ledger or Payroll. Period Dates This program allows you to set up the accounting Periods which will be used throughout the Nominal Ledger - i.e. the months and quarters of your financial year. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 6

11 Nominal Manual Setting up The current year is divided into twelve months with an additional four months of the next year allowing you to enter data for the New Year whilst still making adjustments to last years figures. If you need to have both years open for more than four months you can set these periods for longer than a month. Periods will automatically become periods 1 4 as part of the Year End process. Quarter dates may also be set as well as the accounting year. As schools work more commonly in 3 terms per year the first 3 quarters are often set as term dates with Quarter 4 being August. The dates are generated automatically when New Files are created and rolled on automatically during the Year End process, but may be changed if necessary. For each period there is a Description, Start date and Finish date. Once you have entered everything you want to on this screen click the Ok button to save the entries you have made, and exit the screen. If you find you have made a mistake go back and correct it, then click the OK button again. Control Accounts This program allows you to define which Nominal Accounts will be used for automatic postings from a number of sources. Note that you can only enter valid Nominal Accounts on this screen, so you cannot use this program until you have set up these accounts. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 7

12 Nominal Manual Setting up Five different control accounts may be set up on this screen. Each of these is described below. For each one you may only enter a valid nominal code. The Nominal Code may be divided into 3 sections known as the Division, Department and Expense, hence the three fields displayed for each in the example above. However, you may only be using the Expense, or the Department and Expense fields. In this case only one or two fields will be displayed on your screen, not all three. The drop-down-arrows to the right of each box give a list of valid codes for that field. If your VAT control account was, for example G/B/300 you would enter G in the first field, B in the middle and 300 in the last one. The description for that account will then appear below. If you enter a nominal code which does not exist you will be warned and will need to amend this to a valid account code. Suspense is used by the Payroll module if any items in that module have not been assigned valid accounts the Nominal Transfer will place such items in suspense. Reserves is used by the Year End process, Profit & loss accounts are cleared and the totals will be posted to the account defined here as Reserves. When you enter a batch of accruals the balancing entry is made automatically to the Accruals control account you define here. When the accruals are reversed this will be updated again. When you enter a batch of pre-payments the balancing entry is made automatically to the Pre-Payments control account defined here. When the pre-payments are reversed this is updated again. VAT is used by the Beavers Cash Book, Purchase Ledger and Sales Ledger. VAT is automatically posted to the account specified here if you are accounting for VAT. If you are not registered for VAT no postings will be made to this account. HOWEVER, you must set up a VAT control account even if you are not accounting for VAT separately. Once you have entered all the codes click the Update button to save them, and then the Quit button to exit. Remember to click the Update button before quitting; otherwise your entries will not be saved. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 8

13 Nominal Manual Setting up Account usage The Nominal Account may be divided into three levels. These are called the Division, Department and Expense (see Definition of terms above for more detail on these). It is not necessary to use all three levels - you might decide just to use the last two if you do not need a further level of detail. If you have a very simple account structure you might decide only to use the last part of the code - although this will not provide subtotalling in reports. This program allows you to specify whether you are using the Division and the Department. If you do not wish to use the Division check the Not used box for division. A check in this box means this part of the Nominal Account is NOT in use and will not usually appear on the screen when you are required to enter a nominal account. If you are not using the Division you may also choose not to use the Department by checking the Not used box. It is not possible to use the Division and Expense code, but not the Department. You can also specify if you want to fill account lists on entry to programs. Normally, where a nominal code is required a drop-down list will be automatically filled with a list of valid divisions, departments and expense codes. However, if you have a large number of accounts, and particularly if you are not making use of the divisions and departments, it may take some time to fill the drop-down-list boxes with valid accounts. If this is the case, you may wish to use the option Do not fill account lists, this should ensure there is no delay when entering the account programs. Click the Ok button to save the entries you have made and to exit the screen. New Files This program is used to generate new accounts files. This would normally only be done when you first start using the accounts system, or if you decide to run another nominal ledger unrelated to the one you are running - currently this would be in a different directory from the first one and a separate icon to the Options program would have to be temporarily accessible. It is NOT necessary to generate new files at the year end. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 9

14 Nominal Manual Setting up If you attempt to run this program when the files already exist you will be warned that the files are there already and they will NOT be overwritten. When new files are generated the period dates are set up automatically for you, although these may be changed (see Period Dates above). You therefore need to type in the Year and first month in the For accounting year and Start month number for year fields respectively. You must enter the full accounting year, not just the last two digits. If it spans two years you should enter the first of those years. So, for an accounting year 2007/8, starting in September you would enter 2007 for Accounting year and 9 for start month. This will generate 12 periods from September 2007 to August To create new files first create a short cut on the desktop by right clicking and selecting New, Shortcut. Browse in the Oasis\Progs folder for NOOPT.EXE and click Next. Type Temp Options as the name and Finish. Right click over the new icon and select Properties. Change the Start in to the data folder of the new nominal. Click OK. Double click the temporary icon and click New Files. Enter the year and month and click the Create Nominal data files to generate all the data files. Click OK to prompts Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 10

15 Nominal Manual Setting up Codes Within the Beavers Accounts system there are a number of places where codes need to be entered. You should first set up all the valid codes you might want to use. These will then be presented to you when you need to enter a code via a drop-down list and you simply choose the one you want. The Codes option contains a submenu of codes which may be set up. These are:- Codes which make up the Nominal Account Division Codes Department Codes Expense Codes Sort Codes Codes used within the Cash Book Bank Codes VAT Codes Project Codes Payment Codes Receipt Codes Each of these options is explained in detail below. Nominal Account Codes The nominal account is made up of three sections - the Division, Department and Expense. See Definition of Terms above for more information on this, and Discussion of Account Headings for help on how best to set up your chart of accounts. Before setting up the nominal accounts you should enter the valid Division, Department and Expense codes which will then go together to make the nominal accounts. If you are not using the Division or Department you need not set these up. The screens at each level are identical:- Division and Department Codes may be up to 5 characters, Expense codes up to 9 characters. All are alphanumeric, so you may use any combination of letters and numbers. If you use numbers only remember to use prefixing zeros to avoid 1, 10, 100, 1000 listing together. They should be 0001, 0010, 0100 and 1000 for correct sorting. The Description may be up to 39 characters long. When you set up a nominal account the program attempts to create a description from the descriptions of the division, department and expense codes. So it is best to keep the descriptions here short and simple. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 11

16 Nominal Manual Setting up Once you have entered the code and description click Add to add the code to the list. To change a code select it from the list of codes, make the changes and click Update to save the change or Delete to remove the code. Click Quit to exit the screen. NOTE When setting up codes think about the following points:- 1. Don't make the codes too long. The nominal account is the combination of the codes so if you use 5 characters for the Division, 5 for the Department and 10 for the expense codes you will need to enter 20 characters for every account. 2. You may prefer to use numbers rather than letters as these may be quicker to enter if you are used to using a numeric keypad. 3. Remember however, that if you are using numbers you should always use the same number of digits or the codes may not be sorted correctly. eg if you enter 15,20 and 170, these would be sorted 15,170,20. This is because the field is alphanumeric, so the numbers are treated as characters not numbers, and the 1 of 170 comes before the 2 of 20. To ensure the numbers above are sorted correctly you would need to enter 015,020,170. Bank Codes The Beaver s OASIS Accounts system allows you to run any number of Cash Books for different bank accounts. A different Bank Code should be setup for each Bank Accuont that you wish to reconcile electronically against a hard-copy statement from the bank. For example you would setup an account for your Current Account, but not necessarily for a sweeping account. Simply set up a code for each of them and then enter payments or receipts against the appropriate account. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 12

17 Nominal Manual Setting up Bank Codes may be up to 5 characters and are alphanumeric. To enter a new code type it in. To call up an existing code click the down arrow to the right of the field for a list of valid codes. Enter the Name of the account. It will then be displayed whenever you enter the bank code on the screen. Every bank account must be allocated a Nominal Account which will be used as the Control account for that Bank account. Whenever payments or receipts are entered a control entry will be made automatically to that account. The nominal account must have been set up already before you can enter it here. Click the down arrows to the right of the three levels of the account for a list of valid codes. When you type in the complete account the name will be displayed. If you type in an invalid account you will be warned and will not be able to set up the bank code until you enter a valid nominal account. Enter the Bank account number. This is for your own information and will appear on some reports, it is also used where BACS payments are made. Enter the Next Batch number and Next transaction number. These would normally both be set to 1 when you first set up the bank code, after that they are both updated automatically whenever a batch of payments or receipts are entered, and should not be changed. Project options allow a further level of analysis to be applied to payments and receipts entered through the Cash Book. This is totally independent of the nominal account. It is generally used to analyse things which are either a combination of nominal accounts, or a subdivision of a nominal account. So, for example, you might set up a project 'Sports Day' where in the Nominal ledger the payments and receipts are analysed to Catering, Salaries, Hire of equipment etc. In order to get a true picture of the cost of the sports day you can use the project analysis to record all the payments and receipts which related to it. You do not need to use Projects options if you do not think it will be useful, and in fact, by default it is not used. If you do want to use it you should set up the Project options ticking all three options: Use project codes, Validate project codes to ensure that project codes entered are those you have set up. If you leave this box blank you will be able to enter anything in the project field for a payment or receipt, or leave it blank, but you may inadvertently enter some incorrect codes. Finally tick Allow project analysis to be able to spread a payment or receipt across more than one project code, if this option is not ticked the whole payment or receipt must be allocated to a single project code. If your organisation is Not registered for VAT tick this in the VAT Options. You must make sure this is set correctly before you enter any payments or receipts. The result is that there will be no mention of VAT on your screens and you will not need to enter any VAT. The Nominal account is made up of up to three parts - the division, department and expense code. You may choose not to use all three of these, and you should then change the settings in the Nominal options. If, within your nominal ledger you are only using the department and expense codes, you should uncheck the Use Division box. If you are using only the expense code you would need to uncheck the Use Division and Use Department boxes. Once you have entered all the information for the bank code click the Add button to save the information. To change an existing bank code enter the code (click the down arrow to the right of the Bank Code field for a list of valid codes). Once you have made the changes click Update to save the changes. To delete the code click the Delete button. NEVER delete a bank code which is in use. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 13

18 Nominal Manual Setting up VAT Codes If the school or company represented by the Nominal ledger is registered for VAT you will need to set up the VAT rates. These will then be used to calculate the VAT when payments and receipts are entered. Each different rate must have a VAT Code assigned to it. This is a single alphanumeric character. The Description is for your own information. Enter the percentage of VAT in the Rate field, for example When you have entered all the information for a VAT code click the Add button to save. To amend an existing code select it from the list of existing codes, make the changes and then click the Update button to save the changes. To delete a code select it from the list of codes and then click the Delete button. Do not delete codes when they have been used. There are VAT Partial Exemption programs available for VAT, please contact Beaver Software for further details. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 14

19 Nominal Manual Setting up Project Codes When setting up the Bank Account you may choose whether Projects Codes are to be used or not for payments and receipts through the bank account. See Bank Codes above and also Definition of terms. If Project Codes are in use you may additionally choose to validate them. This program allows you to enter a list of valid project codes. Then, when entering payments or receipts a list of valid codes will be displayed through a drop-down list, and any code entered may be validated against the codes entered here. The Project code may be up to 11 alphanumeric characters and the Description may be up to 39 characters long. Consider the Project codes carefully to allow for reporting for example across several years of Sports Days to make comparisons etc ensure the codes are prefixed with the same characters SD. Once you have entered the Project code and Description click Add. To change a code select it from the list of codes, make the changes and click Update to save the change or Delete to remove the code. Payment and Receipt Codes Whenever you enter a payment or receipt through the Bank programs you must select how the payment or receipt was made. These programs allow you to enter methods of payment such as CHeque, Direct Debit, Standing Order for that selection. Bank reports may be printed for all payment types, or you may choose to report on payments/receipts made in specific ways - eg just cheques, or just direct debits. The screens for both Payment and Receipt Codes are identical and are accessed through Nominal Ledger, Options, Codes, Payment or Receipt Codes. The Payment Code may be up to 3 characters, letters or numbers. The Description may be up to 39 characters long. This is for your own information. Once you have entered the code and description click Add to add the code to the list. To change a code select it from the list of codes, make the changes and click Update to save the change or Delete to remove the code. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 15

20 Nominal Manual Setting up Recalculate Trial Balance This program allows the balances held against each nominal account to be checked against all the transactions entered for the account. The Nominal Ledger data consists of two main files. One file holds all the transactions entered the other holds all the nominal accounts. Within the account file a balance for each period and account is held. The actual balance for any account is the total of all the transactions, but for speed of reporting the period figures are held and updated within the accounts file. Occasionally, this balance might be incorrect, and if you suspect this to be the case you should reset the balances for that account. When the balances are reset the program goes to the main transaction file and adds up all the transactions for the account, ensuring that the balances for each period are correct. There are two times when the balances might be incorrect:- If there has been some sort of file corruption. If the period dates are changed the balances would be held for the original periods, but by running the reset balances they would be re-calculated for the new periods. If you suspect there may be inconsistencies or if you have changed the period dates you would be well advised to reset the balances for All accounts. To recalculate the balance of a specific account select a single account using the drop-down arrows in the Account fields. Enter the first and last periods and quarters in the Periods from and to and Quarters from and to boxes. If the whole year is to be recalculated check For all periods. Once you have selected the accounts and periods click the Reset balances button. This will perform the reset. You will be informed when it has completed. Click the Quit button to exit the screen, but remember to click Reset Balances first. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 16

21 Nominal Manual Setting up Period Closure The Period Closure option allows you to stop accidental postings into periods that you regard as having been closed. Nominal Ledger, Period End, Period Closure You will need to specify the First open period number. Any transactions being accidentally entered into periods earlier than this will receive a warning and will not be allowed. Period End section for details of these options. Please note also that there is a separate program dealing with other period end processes, such as reversing accruals, year end processing and file purging. See later in this guide in the Setting Up - doing things in the right order When first setting up the system it is important to ensure that things are done in the correct order as you will find that some programs may only be used once other things have been set. The following order should be followed:- 1. Decide on the codes you will be using throughout the system. It is important to do this before you start to enter anything. Codes can be planned out in a spreadsheet and then imported if required. 2. If necessary run the New files program in the Options menu. This will create empty files. It may be that the files have already been set up for you, in which case this is not necessary. If, when you select Options a series of messages is displayed saying 'File not found' you will need to run the New files program. 3. Set up User name and Transaction numbers. Check the Period dates. 4. Set the Account Usage to tell the system whether you are using the Division and Department. 5. Start to set up Division, Department and Expense Codes. Before you can set up the Bank codes and the control accounts you will need to enter the Nominal accounts you wish to use - ie Bank accounts, Suspense and Reserves, Accruals, Prepayments, VAT control, Sales and Purchases controls. Set up the Division, Department and Expense codes for these accounts. 6. Go to the Accounts menu and set up all the necessary Control Accounts (see 5 above). 7. Select the accounts in Options, Control Accounts. 8. Set up all the other codes - ie Bank codes, VAT codes, Project Codes and Payment and Receipt codes. 9. Set up all the other Nominal Accounts you wish to use. You may additionally apply budgets to the account as you are setting them up. Print reports to check the accounts you have set up. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 17

22 Nominal Manual Setting up 10. You may now start to enter transactions - journals (eg opening balances), payments and receipts. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 18

23 Nominal Manual Accounts Accounts The Nominal Ledger, Nominal Accounts menu allows you to maintain the nominal accounts. When you select the option the following sub-menu is displayed: Nominal Accounts allows you to setup or amend the nominal account codes. Budgets allows you to set up or amend budget figures for the nominal accounts. Global Account Creation allows you to set up budgets quickly across a range of accounts where they share common features. Codes are created by selecting multiple codes that have been set up for your divisions, departments and expenses. Budgets Globally allows you set setup budgets quickly across a range of accounts. These programs are described in detail below. Nominal Accounts Nominal Ledger, Nominal Accounts, Nominal Accounts allows you to set up or amend nominal accounts. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 19

24 Nominal Manual Accounts Entering A New Account Nominal accounts may consist of up to 3 levels: Division, Department and Expense. You may not be using all of these - see Definition of terms for more information on this. To set up a new account enter the levels of that account. For a list of valid Divisions, Departments and Expense codes click the down arrow to the right of each field. It is always best to select the codes from the drop-down list rather than type them in to ensure you enter them correctly. Once you have entered the full account code and tabbed to Name, if descriptions are available through Options, of the Division, Department and Expense codes the Name will be automatically generated by concatenating the descriptions together. You may alter this, if it is not correct or has become truncated. A Name can be up to 39 alphanumeric characters. The name will be displayed when accounts are entered and will be printed in a variety of reports. The Sort code allows you to group or analyse accounts in a different way to the nominal account order, for example you may have to produce reports in a particular order for auditors, or where you submit your accounts to a governing body or local authority. Many reports may be produced on the basis of Sort Code rather than account. The code is an 11 alphanumeric character field. You may use the same sort code for any number of accounts if you wish to enable them to be reported on together as group. In the Debit/Credit box you should select whether the expected balance on this account will be a Debit or a Credit. This is only used for budgets, budget figures are always entered as positive figures but are used according to the setting in this box. Accounts may be either Balance sheet or Profit and loss accounts. Select the appropriate one in the Account Type box. It is important to set these up correctly because, at the end of the year, Profit and Loss (P&L) accounts will be cleared to zero, while balance sheet accounts will have their balances brought forward. You can specify that an account is a Non-posting account. If you check this you will not be able to enter transactions to this account in the normal way through journals, bank payments/receipts, purchase ledger invoices etc. Transactions will only be posted automatically via the system, for example for control accounts to different ledgers. You should use this option for all your control accounts: bank, purchase ledger, payroll, fees etc... These accounts will be updated automatically by the system. You should only ever enter journals into such accounts to correct errors. Marking an account as a Non-posting account can also be used for accounts that you do not want to use any more. Where you also have the Oasis Asset Register installed, the option to mark the code as an Asset Account can be ticked. By ticking Asset Account when entering a Bank Payment or PL Invoice to this nominal a pop-up option to populate the Asset s details will be displayed. Where you also have the Oasis Fees Ledger installed, the option to mark the code as relating to a Recovery Account can be ticked. By ticking Recovery Account, when printing a Charges report in the Fees Ledger, the current balance in the nominal will be displayed as this will normally be the cost of the trip to be recovered back from the pupils. Once you have entered this information click Add. You may then set budgets for the account if you wish - see below. You may also want to print a list of the accounts you have set up. See the Account reports in the Reports section. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 20

25 Nominal Manual Accounts Finding Existing Accounts If you wish to display an existing account on the screen you may do so in one of the following ways:- 1. Enter the full account code in the Division, Department and Expense fields and press TAB to populate the remaining fields. 2. Click the Find button. This will allow you to search for an account in a variety of different ways. You can set different search criteria. For example, you may only want to include Profit and Loss accounts. In that case, untick the Balance Sheet check box. You may also want to look for accounts in a particular department. In that case, enter the department code. You can use a Name text search. If you enter a string of characters, you can look for all accounts that have those characters as part of the name. When you have set your criteria, click on Find and all accounts satisfying your criteria will be displayed. Double click on the account you want, or select it and click on OK. 3. Use the First and Last, Next and Previous buttons to display the first and last accounts in account order, and to move forwards and backwards through the accounts. Adding Notes to an account You can add notes to an account by first finding the account and then clicking on the Notes button. This will allow you to enter free-hand comments relating to the account. When you click on the Notes button any existing text will be displayed and you will be able to add or amend any notes to the account. There is no limit to the amount you can enter. When you have entered or amended your notes, click on Update to save them and then click on Quit. If notes exist for a selected account the Notes button changes to a *Notes Exist* button. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 21

26 Nominal Manual Accounts Amending and Deleting Accounts To amend an existing account you must first find the account as described above, then make any necessary amendments and click the Update button to save the changes. The account number/code itself may not be amended. To delete an account first find the account and then click the Delete button. You may not delete accounts which have balances on them. If you attempt to delete an account which has a balance you will receive the message: Balance exists for account! Cannot delete. Viewing Balances To view the balances for an account click the View balances button. The following screen will be displayed. The balances are shown for each of the periods and quarters. This screen is read only and may not be altered. To return to the main account screen click the Quit button. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 22

27 Nominal Manual Accounts Setting budgets You can set, amend or view budgets for any account for the current, next or previous financial year. Click the appropriate button to do this: Set current budget, Set next years budget or Set previous years budget. Setting Current Year Budgets Budgets may be set for the year, Annual budget, the four Quarters of this year and two of the next, all the Periods of this year and the first four periods of the next year. All Budget figures are entered as positive figures. When setting up accounts you may specify whether they normally have a Debit or Credit balance. Any budget entered will be taken as this balance. You may set budgets up in a number of different ways:- 1. Type the figures into the Annual budget and into each of the Period fields individually. This method is useful where the spend is likely to be uneven, for example most books will be purchased in the first period of the new term. 2. Enter the Annual budget then use the Period splits button to divide equally between the 12 periods of the current financial year. Nothing will be entered for periods 13 to 16, but you may enter these manually. Use the Quarter splits button to divide the Annual budget between the 4 quarters of the current financial year. Enter Quarters 5-6 manually. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 23

28 Nominal Manual Accounts Note that if there are already figures in the Quarters or the Periods they will NOT be overwritten, but if there are any periods which do not have figures they will be adjusted so that the total periods ends up equal to the Annual budget. If you are using the Quarter splits or Period splits, you may find that you want to round the monthly figure up to ensure that the total of all periods or quarters is the same as the Annual budget. Tick the Round up box and also which particular Period / Quarter you want to round into. 3. If you entered budgets for the previous year you may enter these in the current year by clicking the Use previous year budgets button. This will simply insert last years budgets into the current year and can then be amended. 4. You can also click Use previous years actuals and can then be amended. 5. Use the Increase button to increase each amount by the value entered in the Amount box. 6. Use the Increase button to increase the figures by a percentage. Check the % box and the Amount entered will now be treated as a percentage rather than a value. All figures on the screen will be increased by this percentage. 7. The Increase button may also be used to decrease the existing budgets either by a percentage or by an amount, to do this enter a negative Amount. If you are entering the figures manually into the different Periods and Quarters, the amount remaining from the annual budget will be displayed for you in red. Use the Clear button to clear all the figures on this screen. If you wish to do a new period or quarterly split you should use the Clear button first, then enter the total Annual budget amount and do the split. Once you have entered or updated figures you MUST click the Update button to save the figures. Click the Quit button to exit the screen. Remember to Update any changes you have made first. Next Years Budgets This program allows you to enter budgets for the following year. If you do this they will become the current year budgets when the year end is run. The screen is identical to the Current Year Budgets screen. The only difference is that you can use the current year budgets to base next years figures on rather than the previous years budgets. Previous Years Budgets This program allows you to enter budgets for the previous year. If you entered a current year budget last year and have since run the year end those budgets will already be stored as the previous year budgets. However, you might want to use this program when you first use the system, to enter the previous year budgets. The program is used in the same way as described for current and next years budgets, but we cannot now use another year as a base for our budgets, and there is no facility for increasing existing amounts. Note that when setting the budgets from the main accounts screen, we cannot amend the account codes. If you intend to set budgets for a number of different accounts, it is quicker to use the Budgets options from the Nominal Accounts menu. The screens are identical to the above, but you will be able to enter an account directly from the budget screen, and display whatever is currently set up, before amending it. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 24

29 Nominal Manual Accounts Setting Budgets Globally Current and Next Years budgets may be set globally: Nominal Ledger, Nominal Accounts, Current Years Budgets Globally. Click Nominal Ledger, Nominal Accounts, Current Years Budgets Globally. Specify a range For accounts from / to. Within that range, specify the types of accounts you want to use: P & L /Balance Sheet Accounts, Expenditure/Income Accounts and/or Budgeted Accounts Only. Note that the Overwrite existing budget should be checked if you want to replace any existing budgets with new amounts. Otherwise, only accounts with zero annual budgets will be amended. Select between Use Previous Year Budgets or Use Previous Year Balances. Tick Increase annual amount by and enter how much to increase the annual amount by. Check the % checkbox if the increase is to be a percentage. Specify any Rounding as needed. If you then want the period budgets to be calculated from the annual amount, check the Set period amounts from annual budget. Click on Set Budgets. All the relevant accounts will have the current budgets amended. Next Years budgets can also be set in exactly the same way, but you can Use Current Year Budgets or Use Current Year Balances instead of previous years budgets and balances. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 25

30 Nominal Manual Accounts Global Account Creation Accounts can be created automatically by linking existing definitions of Divisions, Departments and Expense codes that have been defined in the Options. When you use this option you will have all the Codes as set through Options displayed for you. You can then select the ones you want to combine, by clicking selected codes from each of the boxes. In the above example, we will create new accounts for the Lower School, where the departments will be Admin, Labs, Library etc., and the Expense codes will be Misc Charges, Salaries, Maintenance etc. To select multiple codes in the same box, keep the CTRL key held down whilst you click on the selected accounts with the mouse. Each of these new accounts will be set up as a Debit account, only used for budgets and a Profit and loss account. Use the Non-posting account option if you are creating control accounts see earlier description of this option. When you click on Create Accounts the new accounts will be generated and a report will be printed showing the new accounts. The name assigned to each account will be a combination of the Division, Department and the Expense code name. As the maximum number of characters for a name is 39 characters you should keep the descriptions of the codes short. If a common Sort code is required for the selected account type it in UPPER case. Note that if an account already exists, the details will not be over-written. Listing Accounts Once you have set up accounts you may wish to print lists of them. Use the Accounts Report to print a Chart of Accounts or the Trial balance. See the Reports section below. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 26

31 Nominal Manual Transactions Transactions Once you have set up your accounts you may wish to print a list of them for your own records. See the section on Reports for information on this. You may now start to make entries against your nominal codes. Entries may be made in a number of different ways: 1. Nominal Journals 2. Payments through the bank 3. Receipts through the bank 4. Accruals 5. Prepayments Nominal Journals are used to enter opening balances and transfers between accounts which do not affect the Bank balance or financial position of the ledger. All entries which affect the bank balance must be entered as Payments or Receipts. Accruals and Prepayments may be entered prior to the year end and then reversed as part of the year end process. They do not affect the bank balance. Alternatively Accruals and Prepayments can also be done via Self Reversing Journals covered in the Journal section of this manual. Payments and Receipts are documented in the Bank section. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 27

32 Nominal Manual Transactions Journals This program allows you to enter opening balances and transfer amounts between accounts which do not affect the bank balance. All transactions which affect the bank balance MUST be entered via the Payments or Receipts options in the Bank menu, otherwise the bank balance will not be correct. Journals must always net off to zero, have equal credits to debits. When you use the program, the following options are displayed: Journals Batch Allows you to enter batches of journal entries. These may be one-off batches, or may be repeating batches, i.e. batches which use the same accounts in different periods, but often with different amounts. These types of batches can be set up using templates. Templates can be created from a normal journal batch, or can be created separately using the Journal Templates option. When you select Journals the following batch screen will be displayed. All journals must be entered in batches - see the section on definition of terms for more information on batches. In the case of a batch of journals the batch must consist of an equal set of debits and credits. The Oasis accounts system operates full double entry postings, so equal entries must always be made through this program. This screen allows you to set up, amend, list, close or delete a batch of journals. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 28

33 Nominal Manual Transactions Starting a new batch Before you can enter a batch of journals you must set up the batch control information. To start a new batch press the New Batch button. This will enter the next batch number in the Batch number field. Enter the Batch date. All the entries in the batch must fall in the same period as this date. Batch Control This is the total amount of debits or credits in the batch. As the total debits must balance total credits, you need only enter the total for one or the other. Enter the total amount before you enter your batch. Items This is the total number of entries in your batch, including both debit AND credit entries. Batch amount This displays the total number of debit/credit entries currently in the batch, and the total amount. You cannot amend this information. Comment You may enter a comment about the batch if you wish. A record of all batches used is kept, and so the comment will appear if you do a batch history report. The comment also appears by the batch number whenever any batches are still open. Import Items Use this option to import items that may have previously been set up on a spread-sheet, for example year end journals received from the accountants. This option could also be used as an alternative to Templates. Repeating Journals, for example payroll, could be kept on a spreadsheet and amended each month then re-imported. Reverse a previous batch Use this option if you have entered a large batch of journals and then realised it is wrong after you had closed it, for example it might have been posted to the wrong period. Enter items Once the details of the batch have been entered, you can enter the items in that batch. When you click on this button, you will be taken into the items screen. Print batch You can print the contents of a batch, at any time, by clicking on this button. You can also print any previously closed batches. View This button allows you to view the contents of a batch on your screen. This can be an existing open batch, or a previously closed batch. Close Clicking on this button will close or post the batch. Closing the batch will cause all appropriate files to be updated. All items in the batch will be listed in the audit trail, and you will no longer be able to make amendments to the batch. Delete This button will delete the batch. The batch will no longer be available for you to enter items in. No files are updated when you delete a batch. The batch controls, including the comment, will still be available in a batch report. If you delete a batch, you should enter something in the comments field to remind you and the auditors why the batch was deleted. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 29

34 Nominal Manual Transactions Quit This button exits the batch screen and returns to the menu of options again. Save as Template This allows you to save your batch as a template for future reference. Templates are used for occasions when you may have a batch that you would normally need to enter each period. For example, you may want to post your payroll every month. This payroll posting batch would be posting to the same accounts, and would have the same number of entries, but would probably have different amounts for the items in the batch. Saving a batch as a template will allow you to read that batch back and make any amendments relevant to this period. Read Template This allows you to read a template that has been created previously. After reading the template, the batch will consist of the items in the template, except for the dates of the items, and with an optional comment appended to the comment of each item, and to the batch. Entering items in the batch You can enter items in the batch when you have set up the batch controls, after clicking on the Enter items button The Batch details section at the top of the screen indicates the state of the batch. It shows the Control figures which you entered when you started the batch and the total Debits and Credits entered in the batch so far. The debits and credits are shown separately so that you can easily see whether the batch balances at any time. This part of the screen is updated whenever you enter of amend an item. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 30

35 Nominal Manual Transactions The program keeps track of how many entries have already been made in this batch and displays the next item number in the Item box. So, for the first entry this would be 1. If you are making a new entry you should accept this number and tab to the next field. On the first entry the batch date will be displayed in the Date field, but this may be changed if necessary. Subsequent entries will have the date of the previous item displayed by default unless you have checked the clear button (see below). However, you must ensure that the date entered here is in the same period as the batch date. Enter the parts of the Nominal account (division, department and expense). This may be done in one of three ways: 1. Type in the account. If the code you type is a valid code the name of the account will be displayed below. 2. Click on the down arrow to the right of each field to see a list of valid codes. Then click on the one you want. If you are using all three parts of the nominal account the list for the division will contain all valid division codes. Once you have selected one and move on to the department the list will only contain those departments which have accounts set up for the selected division. The expense list will then only contain expense codes which are valid in combination with the selected division and department. If you are using only the department and expense all department codes will be displayed, but only those expense codes valid for the selected department. When you have entered the full nominal account the name will be displayed. 3. Click the Find button. This will allow you to search for an account in a variety of different ways. You can set different search criteria. For example, you may only want to include Profit and Loss accounts. In that case, untick the Balance Sheet check box. You may also want to look for accounts in a particular department. In that case, enter the department code. You can use a Name text search. If you enter a string of characters, surrounded by * you can look for all accounts that have those characters as part of the name. When you have set your criteria, click on Find and all accounts satisfying your criteria will be displayed. Double click on the account you want, or select it and click on OK Enter the Amount and then select whether this is to be a Debit or Credit to the nominal account. Use the arrow keys to change from debit to credit, or click on the one you want with the mouse. You may enter a Comment if you wish. It is advisable to do so, since it will be printed in reports and will make them easier to use. If the same comment is relevant to other items in the batch, highlight it and use Ctrl C to copy the comment. On subsequent items press Ctrl V when in the Comment box to paste in the comment. Once you have entered all the information press the Add button to save the entry. It will then be displayed in the list of entries in the box on the right of the screen. When making journal entries you often repeat information from one entry to another - eg if you are doing a transfer from one account to another the date, amount and comment will probably be the same. To save time when you start a new entry the details for the previous entry will automatically be inserted, and may be changed where necessary. If you do not wish this to happen you should 'check' the Clear box at the top of the screen. Then the screen will be cleared before you start a new entry. Once all transaction have been added/updated click on Quit Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 31

36 Nominal Manual Transactions Importing Items Some users find it convenient to enter items on a spreadsheet before entering them into the nominal ledger. If this is the case, you can import the details by using the Import function. When you click on Import Items, you will be presented with the following screen: The screen shows you the Next item in the batch. Imported items will start at this item number. After import, you can amend any of the item details as normal, before closing the batch. You have a number of date options that may be useful: You can elect to apply the batch..processing date to all items. This option could be used if your import file is one that you will use frequently. In this case, you need not enter a date in the import file, and allow the import process to assign one during import. If any items have dates that are not valid, they will always be replaced by the batch..posting date. You can also decide to over-write valid dates with the..processing date, or you can decide to keep the Same day and year, but just amend the month. This may be useful, where you are importing the same file each month. When you have selected your date options, you can select the file you want to import. Click on the Select Import File button. You will be shown a list of all the CSV files in your Oasis\Data directory. CSV files can be created from standard Excel spreadsheets using Save As. Select the one you want to use and click on OK. The list box will be filled with the items in your file. A validation on the nominal accounts is done and any items that do not have a valid account, will be highlighted with a ****Unknown account**** Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 32

37 Nominal Manual Transactions If you do not want to post all the items in the batch, you can select the ones you do not want to transfer, and click on the Remove selected items button. Any items with ****Unknown accounts**** will NOT be imported anyway, so there is no need to remove these. When ready, click on Import, and the items will be transferred into your batch, after you have confirmed that you want to import. The list box is cleared, and you can now select another file for import if you wish. The format of your import file should have a first line consisting of column headers as shown below. This first line is always ignored by the import process. Subsequent lines must consist of the necessary fields, separated into columns. The spreadsheet is finally Saved As selecting a Save As Type of CSV (Comma delimited) (*.CSV) Date Div Dep Exp Debit Credit Comment 05/01/2004 L ART , Salary 05/01/2004 L MAT , Salary 05/01/2004 L SPO , Salary 05/01/2004 L SPO , Salary 05/01/2004 U WKS , Salary Example once saved as CSV (Comma delimited) (*.CSV): 05/01/01,L,ART,2000,"15,237.73",,Salary 05/01/01,L,MAT,2000,"3,145.93",,Salary 05/01/01,L,SPO,2001,"2,145.86",,Salary 05/01/01,L,SPO,2000,"14,839.23",,Salary 05/01/01,U,WKS,2000,"2,581.45",,Salary Note that if your data contains any commas, as in the amounts above, the field should be surrounded by but Excel will normally do this task as part of saving the CSV file. Note also that if your Div,Dep or Exp contain leading zeros, Excel would strip them off unless you first format the cells in the column using custom and etc. If you have set up your nominal so that you are not using the Division or Department, the columns can be omitted from the file altogether. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 33

38 Nominal Manual Transactions Amending or deleting an item in the batch If you find that you need to alter one of the items you have already finished you will first need to display that item. This may be done in one of the following ways:- 1. Select the item you want from the list to the right of the screen by clicking on it with the mouse. 2. Type the number of the item you want to change in the Item field and pressing TAB. Once the details are displayed you may make the necessary changes and then press the Update button to save the changes. To delete the item press the Delete button. If you now have more entries to make you will need to press the Next item button to display the next new item number. Once all transaction have been added/updated click on Quit Viewing and printing an open batch While you are actually entering items in a batch a list of items is always displayed on the screen. However you can also view the contents of the batch from the Batch header screen by pressing the View button. The screen shows the batch control figures and the items in the batch. If you need to Amend the amount or the Date of an item, just select that item by clicking on it with the mouse. The amount and date are then displayed for you and you can amend them as necessary. This is particularly useful if you have just read a template, or imported a file, and now need to amend the amounts of the items. It is quite quick to do this if you use the keyboard alone instead of using the mouse. After you have selected the first item in the list that you want to amend, use the ALT and A(mount) key to move directly to the amount field, or the ALT and D(ate) key to move to the date field. Make the amendment and use ALT and U to update the item. You will find Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 34

39 Nominal Manual Transactions that the next item in the list will be selected automatically. Just repeat the process to make your amendments and Quit when finished. The items in a batch may also be printed at any time. It is often easier to check a printed list than a list on the screen. Press the Print batch button on the batch header screen. You will be asked which printer to use - see the section on Printing for more information on this screen. The list should be printed shortly. Amending batch controls When you have entered all the items in the batch the total debits and credits entered should equal the batch control total you entered originally. However you may find that you have miscalculated the total number of items in the batch, or the total amount, and you therefore want to change the batch control details. If so, just make the changes to the batch amount and items figures as necessary. Closing a batch. When you have completed entering a batch, click on the Close button to update your files also referred to as posting. You will only be allowed to close a batch with an equal amount of debits and credits. You will be warned if the actual items do not add up to the batch control figures. When you click on the Close button, you will need to enter printer details for your audit trail. See the section on printing for more information. Whenever you close a batch of journals an audit trail is printed. If no errors are detected the batch is marked as closed, and you will no longer be able to make any amendments to it. If errors are detected during the closure, details are printed on the audit trail and the batch remains open until such errors are corrected. Deleting a batch If you decide that you have started entering a batch in error, you may delete an entire batch by using the Delete button in the main batch control screen. Before you do this, enter an appropriate comment for future reference. Deleted batches are also included in batch audit trail reports. Reversing a batch If you have entered a batch of journals and realised it is wrong after you have closed it you can now reverse the batch. Start a New Batch of Journals as detailed at the beginning of this chapter and complete the Batch Header information then click on Reverse a previous batch. When you click this button you will be taken to a further screen which is similar to the one you would use when importing journals. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 35

40 Nominal Manual Transactions In this screen, you will need to select the batch number you want to reverse by clicking on Select batch and entering the batch number to be reversed OK. There will be a check that the date of the batch being reversed falls in the same period as the posting date of the reversing batch you are now in. If it doesn't, you will be prompted to either change your new posting date, or to tick the option in the import screen to Replace all dates with processing date. You will only be able to reverse batches that were closed in your current accounting year. The items in the batch will then be shown, reversed, and you can decide to Import these into your new batch. The following prompt will be displayed, click Import again and the items will be reversed and a total number of items imported will be displayed once the process is complete, click OK Click Quit to leave the Journal Batch Reversals screen and Close the batch as with any other Journals batch. Note If you want to reverse a batch that was a Self Reversing batch, you will need to do this in two stages. First, select a posting date which is the same as the original posting date. Then, use the option to Replace all dates with processing date to items you want to reverse, and enter the batch number you want to reverse. REMOVE the items that fell into the next period and import the remaining items. Second, create a second reversing batch and use a posting date which was the beginning of the period that was used for the reversing items in the original batch. Select the option again to Replace all dates with Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 36

41 Nominal Manual Transactions processing date and select the same batch number to be reversed again. This time, remove the first items in that batch and import the rest. Creating a Template for Future use Occasionally you may want to use a batch of journals that you have used before, using the same accounts but with different dates and amounts. For example similar Payroll journals might be made every month only with slightly differing amounts. You can set up such repeating batches by using Templates. These can be set up directly from the Nominal Ledger, Journals, Templates or from an existing batch of journals you are using, by using the Save as Template button before closing the batch. You can see all the templates that have been set up through Nominal Ledger, Journals, Templates, existing templates and their descriptions are shown in the Batch number list prefixed by the template number. To set up a new repeating batch, click on the New Batch button. Then fill in the batch items as you would any normal journals batch. Note that all the options are available as on a normal batch, except the option to close the batch instead click on Quit which will save the details of the batch without posting or updating any files. You must be in an existing journals batch when you want to use a template: Nominal Ledger, Journals, Journal Batch. Click on the New Batch button to create a new batch, then click on Read Template, and select the template you want to use by Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 37

42 Nominal Manual Transactions clicking on the arrow to the right of the template numbers /descriptions and then clicking on the template you want to use. You can then enter a New processing date and add to the existing batch comment by typing into Append text to comments. Anything you enter here will be added to the comment for each item in the batch, and also for the batch itself. Click on Load Template, a prompt asking whether you wish Overwrite existing batch number will appear click OK. The prompt is a precaution against an already populated but unposted batch being overwritten by a template in error. Finally you will be prompted to Load the template. Click OK and your new journals batch will be filled with the items from the template. You will now need to amend the amounts and possibly dates. You can do this easily by Viewing the batch, as described earlier. Self Reversing Batches A self reversing batch of journals is one that automatically produces reverse entries on the first day of the period immediately following the posting period for the batch. The reverse entries are generated when you close the batch. This option is often used as part of the Year End process. To make a batch self reversing, check the Self reversing batch checkbox before closing the batch. Accruals Accruals are entered in batches. Other than the fact that the batch need not balance - since when you close the batch the balancing entry will be posted to the Accruals Control account, entering accruals is very similar to entering Journals. It is assumed that by the time you come to enter Accruals you will be familiar with the general principles of entering transactions, so these are not described in detail in this section. For a detailed description of batches, the buttons on each of the screens etc, see the section on Journals in Transactions above. Nominal Ledger, Journals, Accruals This screen allows you to set up using New Batch, amend using Enter items, Print or View an existing or open batch and Delete an open batch. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 38

43 Nominal Manual Transactions If you start an accruals batch in error and decide you wish to remove it click on Delete batch. Only an open batch of accruals can be deleted. To start a new batch of Accruals press the New batch button and the next sequential Batch number will appear. Enter the Processing date, normally the last day of the year or period and the Batch control amount and Items if used. Finally enter a Comment about the batch if you wish. Then press Enter items to enter the individual accruals. The buttons at the bottom of the screen are the standard buttons found on all Beavers batch header screens. For a description of what they do please see the section on Journals above. Entering items in the batch When you press the Enter items button the following screen is displayed:- The top part of the entry screen indicates the state of the batch. It shows the batch control details, and the total accruals entered in the batch so far against any control figures entered on the Batch Header screen. The remainder of the screen is used to enter individual items. For each item the Item number will be generated automatically, and you need to just select or enter the Nominal account, Amount and Comment. Once the details of an accrual have been entered press the Add button to save the entry. It will now appear in the list to the right of the screen. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 39

44 Nominal Manual Transactions To amend an existing entry select it from the list on the right or type in the Item number. Make any changes and then press the Update or Delete followed by Next item button to enter another new item. Once you have entered all the accruals Quit and from the batch header screen use the Close button on the batch header screen to post the accruals to the Nominal Ledger. During the Year end process the accruals will be reversed. Prepayments Prepayments are entered in batches in exactly the same way as accruals. The only difference is that when the batch is closed, the prepayments control account is updated instead of the accruals control account. Reversing Accruals/Prepayments Select from the Nominal Ledger, Period End and Reversals. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 40

45 Nominal Manual Reports Amend the For period to 12 (or whatever your last period is for the year). This will then amend the Posting date for your reversals, to the beginning of period 13. Click on Reverse. An audit trail of the reversals will be printed. Reports You can produce a wide range of reports from the Nominal Ledger. There are four different groups of reports within the Nominal Ledger: 1. Nominal reports - general nominal ledger reports such as Trial Balance, VAT and Transaction reports etc. Found in the Reports menu and documented in this section. 2. Bank reports - A general Bank report, plus Statement report for reconciliation. Found in the Bank menu and documented in the Bank section of the manual. 3. Audit reports - batch history report and audit trails. Also screen enquiries which allow you to view single transactions in detail. Found in the Audit menu and documented in the Audit section of the manual. 4. Management reports - Balance sheet, Profit & Loss and special Management reports. These are all User defined. Found in the Management sub-menu of the Reports menu and documented in the Management section of the manual. Most reports can be either: Printed to printer, sent to a PDF file, Exported or Viewed on screen. Exported reports must be saved with a filename suffixed by CSV. To open an exported file in Excel, click File, Open and change the drop down at the bottom of the dialog box Files of Type to Text Files. All exported files within Oasis are located in the Oasis\Data folder. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 41

46 Nominal Manual Reports Nominal reports Nominal Ledger reports are available from the Nominal Ledger, Reports menu. The options in this are as shown below: Trial balance prints a trial balance for a selected period. Account Report prints a list of nominal accounts/chart of accounts. Transaction Report prints the transactions for selected nominal accounts. Budget report prints budget comparison and variance reports for account within a range, those over or under budget etc. VAT report prints a report of VAT inputs and outputs. Project report prints transactions assigned particular project codes. View Account allows you to view the transactions entered for a selected nominal account on the screen. A further sub-menu exists for Management Reports. These will be described later. All of these reports, how to produce them and common features available to them are described in detail below. Trial Balance A trial balance is available to ensure that there are no fundamental problems in the Nominal Ledger. In standard double entry book-keeping, each debit entry has an equivalent credit entry, and so the total debits will always equal the total credits. Hence a Trial Balance should always show an equal amount of debits and credits. The Trial Balance program verifies that this is true, prints a summary report for the selected period and also gives you further options. The screen is shown below: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 42

47 Nominal Manual Reports First select the Periods you want to print the trial balance for. Period dates are set up in the Options. The standard trial balance shows the actual figures for the periods selected and the cumulative figures as at the last period selected. Normally a trial balance by definition includes all nominal accounts. However since the trial balance itself is a summary report for balances at a particular period you may also use it to print a rough Profit & Loss account or Balance Sheet. To do this select either Balance sheet items or P & L items by ensuring the one you want is 'checked' - ie has a tick in the box - while the other is 'unchecked' - the box is blank. If you choose to print these reports singularly, for example Balance sheet items only, then the totals will not balance but the difference between the debits and credits will show the profit and loss figure and vice versa. You may exclude or Include zero balance accounts. Normally you would probably only want to see those accounts with balances. However from time to time you may want to print a report for all your accounts. This is also a useful way of producing an account list showing all your accounts. The report type allows you to select a Standard report or a User defined report. Select which you want to use. If you select the User Defined report, you will then need to select a format to describe the User Defined report. Do this by clicking on the User Defined Format button. This assumes you have set up a format template, using a text editor such as Notepad. See the section on User defined reporting for information on setting up and using your own report formats. Pitch decreases or increases the size of print. The larger the number the bigger the print. Click Print and if necessary Amend to select from available printers. Print Examples 1. Trial balance wide report. Beavers Training School Trial balance 20/01/98 Page 1 For period 2... Period..... Cumulative.. Account... Sort code Name Debit Credit Debit Credit G CONTROLS Current Account G CONTROLS Deposit Account G CONTROLS P & L carried forward Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 43

48 Nominal Manual Reports G CONTROLS General Control Acts PAYE J FEES Junior Income Tuition Fees J PAYROLL Junior Teaching Depts Salaries J EQUIP Junior Teaching Depts Equipment J MATERIALS Junior Teaching Depts Materials J BOOKS Junior Teaching Depts Books J PAYROLL Junior Sports Salaries J EQUIP Junior Sports Equipment J PAYROLL Junior Art Salaries J EQUIP Junior Art Equipment J MATERIALS Junior Art Materials M FEES Main Income Tuition Fees M PAYROLL Main Teaching Depts Salaries M EQUIP Main Teaching Depts Equipment M MATERIALS Main Teaching Depts Materials M BOOKS Main Teaching Depts Books M PAYROLL Main Sports Salaries M EQUIP Main Sports Equipment M INCOME Main Art Sales M PAYROLL Main Art Salaries M EQUIP Main Art Equipment M MATERIALS Main Art Materials M STATIONERY Main Admin Stationery Viewing the Trial Balance You can view the report in two ways. The first is just a view of what you would get if you printed the report, but without page breaks. The other method allows you to drill down on accounts to see more information about them. If you just want to see what would be printed, click on the View button. If you want to use drill down click on the View/Examine button. If you use the View/Examine button, you will get the following screen: You can then drill down to see the make-up of any of the accounts, either by doubleclicking on the account, or selecting it with a single click and clicking on the Examine button. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 44

49 Nominal Manual Reports Please note that where a transaction originated in another ledger, for example a fee or purchase ledger posting, then drill will only be as far as the batch posting to the Nominal, it is not possible to drill up into the Fees Ledger. However, having drilled as far as possible in the Nominal you will now have the information required to return to the source ledger and reviews the details of the batch there. Export To transfer the contents of the Trial Balance to Excel for further analysis click on Export selecting from one of the preloaded export formats: NOMTB(1, 2sp or 3).NEX Each format offers a slightly difference combination of columns, for example with Division, Dept, Expense in separate or one column. If the.nex files are missing contact Beaver Software. Having selected the format file, enter an Output file name, the default name will be TB followed by month and day. The filename must be suffixed with.csv To open an exported file in Excel refer to the beginning of this chapter. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 45

50 Nominal Manual Reports Common Reporting Features For the Account, Transaction and Budget reports there is a common dialog box and these three reports all have reporting features in common and detailed below. Tool tips are available on all, hover over or click on the field with the mouse a tip will appear telling you how to use that field. This is the example of the tip for the Search Filter field. You can select a font for your report either by changing the Font drop down, Pitch and using either Bold or Italic. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 46

51 Nominal Manual Reports Alternatively you can use the Select Font button to take you to a the Select Font dialog box. This allows you to not only change the Font, Size etc, but also shows a Sample of the font, allowing you to see the same on the screen as would be printed. Please bear in mind, though, that in many cases the report requires a nonproportional font, otherwise the columns will not line up. You may need to use courier new for your reports, since this is non-proportional. The order the report prints/views in is selected via Report Order. The list can either be in Account number order, or where used in groups by Sort code and then by Account. By default the first and last accounts will be displayed in the Accounts From and To boxes, thereby capturing all accounts by default. To print all accounts leave the ranges as they are when you enter the screen. To select a single account select the Account From and then use Ctrl D on the keyboard to duplicate the account to the Accounts To fields. Alternatively an account s Sort code can be entered in the Sort Code From/To boxes. These are case sensitive and would normally be in UPPER CASE. In addition to selecting accounts by code there are a number of tick boxes to limit the report to for example P and L Accounts rather than Balance Sheet Accounts. Tick as required. The Search Filter allows you to look for text within the account name. This helps you find accounts with particular text in them. Put in the piece of text you are looking for. You can use the character as an or, e.g. you might want to look for paper or stationery so you could enter paper stationery in the text search. This would find any entries with either paper or stationery, anywhere in the Account Name for the Accounts Report or the comment for the Transaction Report. You can use the Exclude filtered items box to only include accounts which do NOT have the filtered text in. To search for more than one piece of text you can use the pipe character as or. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 47

52 Nominal Manual Reports Advanced Selections In addition to the selection criteria outlined above there is also an Advanced Selections option. When you select the Advanced Selections button the following screen is displayed This allows you to select accounts to be included in the report in a number of different ways. Note that the accounts will be printed in the order they appear in this list, not in account code order. Different ways in which you can include accounts are: - Type the Div Dep and Exp into the fields at the top. Then press the Find button and that account will be added to the list in the box. - Use the drop down arrow keys on Div, Dep and Exp to select an account. Then use the Find button to include it. - Put in part of the Account eg find all the accounts with a Dep of CTL. Clear the Div and Exp and just have CTL in Dep. Press Find. All the accounts with CTL in the Dep will be displayed. You can then remove any you don t want included in the report. - Alternatively type part of the name of the accounts you are looking for, for example type salaries into the Name search and click Find. - To remove any accounts highlight them and press the Delete key on the keyboard. To remove multiple accounts hold down the Ctrl key and click on all the accounts to remove. To remove a group of accounts together hold down the Shift key and click on the first and last in the group. All of them will be highlighted. Use the Delete key to remove them. - To clear the selections completely use the Clear button. Don t use this to remove highlighted accounts, as it will remove all accounts from the selections. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 48

53 Nominal Manual Reports You can continue adding to your selections. Each new account will be added after the ones you have already selected. If you find the order is wrong you can delete accounts higher up and add them later on. Once you have made all your selections in the order you want you can print or preview your report. Saving Advanced Selections You can save the selections you have made. If you are producing a report on a selection of accounts you might want to see again it would be advisable to save the selections. To do this simply click on the Save button. You will be asked for a name to save to. Type in a name which is meaningful. It can be a long name with spaces. It will automatically be given an extension of.nls. and will be saved in your oasis\data directory. Restoring Advanced Selections If you want to print a report with selections you saved previously you can go into the Advanced Selections and use the Restore button to find the file in which you saved your selections. All files in your data directory with the extension.nls will be displayed for you to choose from. When you select the one you want the accounts will be displayed in the selection box. You can now make changes to the selection adding or deleting accounts if you wish. When you are happy with the selections press OK to go back to the main screen. Printing Once you have made all your report selections you can Print to a printer of your choice clicking Amend when prompted to print to other than the default printer. PDF All reports can now be printed to a PDF (Portable Document Format) file so the report can be attached, ed and read by almost any computer. To create a PDF file, tick the PDF output box and then click Print. Type a suitable filename suffixed with.pdf which will automatically be stored to the Oasis\Data folder. When prompted accept the default printer as a file is being generated and no printer is actually used. The printed file can now be attached to an as with any other attachment. View Preview the report using the View button. You can now use the mouse scroll wheel to move up and down within the report and you can use Ctrl and the mouse scroll wheel to change the size of / zoom the report, making it easier to read on the screen although this feature may not be available in all operating systems. Reports now appear showing the end of the report not the beginning. This will be particularly useful in some reports, eg Trial Balance where you might be most interested in the figures at the end. Preview can be maximised and/or minimized. This is a particularly useful as it allows you to have multiple preview s open, so on the transaction report you would be able to compare two different selections by making the first selection, doing preview, then minimizing it. Then do a second selection and make both previews middle sized. You can then see them both on the screen at the same time. View Drill Down If a report is being viewed double-clicking on a line will drill-down to the next level of detail, to the records from which the current row was generated. This option to drill can, where the transactions are from the Nominal Ledger directly, be achieved to several layers deep, returning finally to the batch a single transaction emanated from. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 49

54 Nominal Manual Reports Please note that where a transaction originated in another ledger, for example a fee or purchase ledger posting, then drill will only be as far as the batch posting to the Nominal, it is not possible to drill up into the Fees Ledger. However, having drilled as far as possible in the Nominal you will now have the information required to return to the source ledger and reviews the details of the batch there. Export The Export button allows you to export the data in the usual way. When you select an Export it will be the same as the report type selected and must be named suffixed with.csv To open an exported file in Excel refer to the beginning of this chapter. Accounts report The Accounts report allows you to produce a basic chart of accounts listing the basic information about your accounts using the various options shown below. In addition to the standard features outlined previously, there are a number of Report Types you can select: Simple chart of accounts, Current balances, Last years balances, Last, Current and Next Year s Budgets. You can also produce an export file which you may then import into other systems, such as spread-sheets or databases. When you select an Export it will be is same as report type selected. Under Report Type you now have the following drop down list: Examples Reports This first example is a standard Chart of Accounts and shows no financial information. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 50

55 Nominal Manual Reports mple chart of accounts Si This second sample shows not only the account definitions but also includes the current years budgets. Current Years Budgets Transaction report The Transactions report shows the detail of the transactions that make up the balance on an account. Due to the additional data there are more selection criteria available than for the Accounts Report. In addition you may limit the report to a range of dates by entering the required dates in the Dates from and to fields. If you do this you may choose to have the balance brought forward at that date calculated and included. If so make sure the Brought forward balances box is 'checked' - ie has a cross in it. Otherwise no balance brought forward will be displayed, and it will not be included in the total for the account. Similarly a report can be limited to range of Transaction numbers if known. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 51

56 Nominal Manual Reports There are some additional check box options in the Transaction report: - Subtotals which will subtotal by Division and Department. - Page breaks, there are a variety of page break options. - Include Inactive Accounts is similar to including zero balance accounts. - Unapproved Purchase Ledger and Detail Committed Orders allow transactions not finally authorised to be included in the report. - If you select the option Transaction origin details, you will get a further line for each transaction, showing the source of that transaction, e.g. Bank Payment/Receipt CBP/CBR, Purchase Ledger PLI, Payroll etc. The Transaction report, as detailed with the Account Report, can than be Printed, sent o PDF, Viewed or Exported. Example Transaction report Budget Report The budget reports option allows you to produce budget reports for a variety of accounts, including three different types of variance calculation. In addition there is the option to produce a user defined report. Most options for the Budget report are the same as with the Account and Transaction reports detailed previously with the addition of the following. There are three methods of calculation available for a budget report. It is not possible for a user to add their own calculation, for this level of flexibility Export to Excel. The report shows the actual figure, budget figure and the variance. There are three different ways in which the variance may be calculated. These are displayed in the Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 52

57 Nominal Manual Reports Calculation type box. Select the type you want to use, by clicking the appropriate radio button, or using the arrow keys to move the highlight. It is important to understand what these options will show you. (Variance/budget)x100 shows the percentage variance from budget. So, if the actual is the same as the budget is will show 0 - as there is no variance. If you have underspent the variance will be shown as a POSITIVE figure, if you have overspent as a NEGATIVE figure. So, if the budget is 10 and you have spent 5 the %variance will be shown as 50. If you have spent 20 the %variance will be Budget balance remaining If all you want is simply the budget less actual to show the balance remaining, select this option in the calculation type. (Actual/budget)x100 shows the proportion of the budget which has been used, so if the actual and budget figures are the same this will show 100, as you have spent 100% of your budget. If the budget was 10 and you had spent 50 the variance figure would show 500 as you have spent 500 times your budget, but if you had spent only 5 it would show 50 as you have spent only 1/2 your budget. In addition to the standard criteria a Budget report may also be limited to a range of Periods or Quarters. Enter the Period or Quarter numbers into From and To. The Period view shows a comparison of actual against budget for the periods. Samples of the three calculation types are given below and have been run without Summary for a 2 month period, periods 1 and 2: (Variance/Budget)x100 Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 53

58 Nominal Manual Reports Budget balance remaining (ACTUAL/BUDGET)X100 If when the reports are run Summary is ticked, only one line per account is displayed as a cumulative of the selected periods, so for example the 350 periods budget for 1 and 2 becomes 700. When running a budget report in summary there is also an option to Use annual budget for summary report. If ticked this option will instead of showing 700 for two periods in the above scenario, will infact show the annual budget for the total 12 periods of 4,200, whilst comparing this to the selected periods actuals. (ACTUAL/BUDGET)X100 SUMMARY WITH ANNUAL BUDGET FOR PERIODS 1 AND 2 Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 54

59 Nominal Manual Reports Unfavourable balances, e.g. those over budget, are shown with a *U* against them. Details of these accounts can be seen by double-clicking on the account when viewing. Nominals which include Committed Orders are shown with (C) against them. To see details of the committed orders a Transaction report would have to be run with Committed Orders ticked. VAT Report The VAT report allows you to print reports that can be used when completing the Inland Revenue VAT forms. A VAT report can be produced for any date range, entering the For date from/to that match the current VAT period you are completing a return for. You may choose to include only Outputs (Sales), Inputs (Purchases) or both. Regardless of you selection a separate balance will be displayed for Output and Inputs as well as a Net VAT figure. By default all sources of data into the Nominal ledger will be reported, but if a particular source is to be omitted, untick All batches and select the sources you do wish included. For more than one source click and drag or where sources that do not sit adjacent to one another are required use Ctrl on the keyboard and click. Tick Control report to include the details from the Nominal Ledger VAT control account. The main report shows the entries in the VAT file, and obviously the two sets of figures should agree. Normally the Exclude payments to HM Customs and Excise would be checked to omit from the audit of the VAT Control account at the bottom of the report any payments made Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 55

60 Nominal Manual Reports to HM Customs out of the VAT Control account so the audit only reflects VATable transactions. Where the VAT control has been maintained via journals, you must tick NL Manual Journals only, for these journals to be used on the audit section of the report rather than the normal journalled transactions which take place with every vatable purchase and receipt. You may print a Summary or a detailed report. The detailed report shows every payment and receipt, the totals for each VAT rate and the payment due. The summary report just shows the total Inputs, Outputs at each VAT rate and the overall balance. When a VAT Report is being run in conjunction with completing a VAT return, it is useful for all transactions that have been included in the report to be flagged. This will allow you to easily check if any VAT items have fallen accidently into a previously reported period, or at the end of a year to ensure all items have been reported. To identify transactions in this way tick Mark items as reported. To reprint a VAT Period where items were previously marked, then tick Include marked items in report. When you have filled in the screen click the Print button to print the report, or View to view it first. Press the Quit to exit the screen once the report has been printed. Project Report A report may be produced on transactions relating to Project Codes that have been set up. You may produce the report for any range of project codes. The settings when you first enter the screen will include all project codes. Payments and receipts which were not allocated a project code will not be included in the report. To run the report for a specific range of Project Codes select them from the Project code from and to drop-downs. When setting up Project Codes it is important to consider in what grouping you may wish to report on them, for example if it is to be annually then prefix the code with the year 09SPO, 09CAT or if it is by topic, for example to see spend on sports days across years then prefix with the topic SPO09 Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 56

61 Nominal Manual Reports If Live Items only is checked the report ensures that project transactions in batches that have not been closed will be excluded. The report can be run for any date range by entering the dates in the Date from/to boxes in the format dd/mm/yy. You may also choose to print a Summary, where there is one line and balance per project code, or a detailed report showing all transactions against the project code. If your date range does not include all dates you may choose to have the balance up to the start date calculated and included on the report. To do this make sure the Brought forward balances box is checked. To print the standard report press the Print button, or to view it click on the View button. EXAMPLE Beavers Training School Project report 21/01/98 Page 1 Project code ENGLISH Date Batch/source/trans Details Trans Amount Project Brought forward /01/98 1/2 TA/CBP 7 J Peters /01/98 1/5 TA/CBP 2 W H Smiths Total for ENGLISH Project code FRENCH Date Batch/source/trans Details Trans Amount Project Brought forward /01/98 1/1 TA/CBP 5 D J Bookstore /01/98 1/2 TA/CBP 1 J Peters /01/98 1/5 TA/CBP 2 W H Smiths Total for FRENCH Total for all codes Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 57

62 Nominal Manual Reports In the above example, project codes have been used to identify the individual department, as the Nominal Codes are limited to 'teaching departments' as a group. The Summary report shows just the totals for each of the different project codes, English, French, but without Summary the individual transactions are shown. Note in the above example that both the transaction amount and the project amount are shown. In some cases these are the same, but in some the project amount is less. This is where only part of a payment or receipt has been analysed to this particular project code. View Account As well as an option to print reports it is possible to View an Account and its various transactions. Nominal Ledger, Reports, View Account Select the Account by either typing, or using the drop-down arrows to select, the Division, Department and Expense to be viewed. If you are not sure of the nominal code click the Find Account button. This will allow you to search for an account in a variety of different ways. You can set different search criteria. For example, you may only want to include Profit and Loss accounts. In that case, untick the Balance Sheet check box. You may also want to look for accounts in a particular department. In that case, enter the department code. You can use a Name text search. If you enter a string of characters, surrounded by * you can look for all accounts that have those Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 58

63 Nominal Manual Reports characters as part of the name. When you have set your criteria, click on Find and all accounts satisfying your criteria will be displayed. Double click on the account you want, or select it and click on OK. If you only wish to view transactions for the selected account within a given period, type the dates into the Date from and to boxes. By default these are set to capture all dates. If viewing from a given date you may wish to have a Bal brought forward If no Account is selected and View is clicked all nominal accounts will be bought to screen. It will be an enormous amount of data and a one line Summary per account might be more suitable. Where the Oasis Purchase Ordering system is in place you may wish to display any Committed items. Where a large number of transactions are bought to screen and you are searching for a specific transaction, if the transaction(s) carries specific narrative with it, for example a comment stored on entering the item, then type the narrative enclosed in ** into Search text. For example if you are looking for a particular type of expenditure on PC s then *PC* will limit the transactions to only those featuring PC anywhere in their name or comment. In conjunction with Search text, any transaction featuring the text can be excluded by ticking Exclude items containing text characters. For example you might want to exclude all postings from Fees. Once you selection has been made click View and if required Print Further detail of a transaction can be obtained by either double clicking on the transaction or clicking once to select the transaction and then on the Examine button. Where you have a cluster of nominal accounts to be viewed and dependent on how they have been setup in relation to Div, Dep, Expense you may be able to move between accounts using Next act or Previous act. Click Quit to leave the screen. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 59

64 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank Bank The Bank menu holds a number of programs which allow you to enter payments and receipts, report on movements, do electronic reconciliations and print cheques for any of your bank accounts. The bank accounts themselves must first be set up in Options as detailed in the previous chapter: Setting Up, Bank Codes. A code is set for each bank account - eg you might use 01CA for current account, 02D1 for deposit account 1 etc. Each bank code is allocated a nominal account. Whenever you use a Bank facility within Oasis you specify which of the bank accounts to use. Postings are automatically made to the specified nominal account. For bank accounts with very little movement during the year you may choose not to set up a cash book through Options and just make entries directly into the nominal ledger account for that bank account. Petty cash payments and receipts may also be entered through the Bank programs. The petty cash account is set up as a bank account in the Options and all payments and receipts are entered through the Bank programs. See the section on Petty Cash for more information. The Nominal Ledger, Bank menu contains a submenu of general options related to the bank account Enter Payments allows you to enter all payments out of the bank account. Enter Receipts allows you to enter all receipts into the bank account. Bank Report prints a general report of payments and receipts. Bank Rec allows you to allocate statement numbers to payments and receipts and then print a bank reconciliation. Statements report prints the bank reconciliation report. Amend narrative details allows you to amend non financial information such as the cheque number, statement page number and comment for a single payment or receipt. Cheques prints cheques for payments which have been entered. All these programs are documented in this section. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (60)

65 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank Bank Payments Batch header screen Payments which are made out of any of your bank accounts must be entered using the Enter Payments program in the Bank menu. Payments may only be entered for Bank accounts which have been set up in the Options menu. Petty Cash payments can be entered via this program too. This program may be used for payments, including cheques, which have already been made. It may also be used to enter cheques which have not yet been produced. These cheques may then be printed using the Cheques program. As with Nominal Journals, payments are entered in batches - see the section on definition of terms for more information on batches. Before you start to enter a batch of payments check to see that they all fall in the same period. To enter a batch, you must first enter the batch control details in the following screen which is accessed through Nominal Ledger, Bank, Bank Payments: You must first select the Bank Account you wish to use by entering the code or pressing the down arrow to the right of the field for a list of valid codes and selecting the one you want. These will already have been set up in the Nominal Ledger, Options program. When you have selected a bank code, you can start a new batch of entries, by clicking on the New batch button. This will insert the next sequential batch number in the Batch number field and default to today s date in the Processing date field. You may change the date if necessary. You may have any number of batches open at the same time. If, instead of starting a new batch you wish to work on an existing batch you should either type in the batch number or Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (61)

66 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank use the down arrow next to Batch number, to see a list of open batches and select the one you want. If you are entering a new batch you should now enter the Batch control amount and Items. Before starting to enter a group of payments and receipts you should always add them up and enter the batch control figures, to ensure that you do not make any errors when entering them. The Batch Amount figures will be blank at this point, but once you have started to enter items these will show in red the current batch total and number of items in the batch. You may enter a Comment describing the batch. This will appear on Batch History reports. Once you have entered this information you may press the Enter items button to enter the payments. This is described below. The other buttons on this screen work in the following way:- Quit exits back to the Bank menu. You may exit and leave a batch open at any time, returning to it later. Print Batch prints the current contents of the batch. This is useful for checking purposes. When you select this option you will need to specify which printer to use - see the section on Printing for more information. Note that on Closing a batch a full audit trail will always be printed. View allows you to view the list of items in the batch on the screen for checking purposes. Close allows you to close the batch and is equivalent to posting. Once a batch is closed it cannot be changed. You will be warned if the batch figures do not agree with the control figures and asked if you wish to continue by clicking Close again or Don t Close. You will then be asked which printer to use for the audit trail. See the section on Printing for more information. The batch will then be closed and transactions will be entered in the Cash book and Nominal Ledger. An audit trail will be printed which should be checked and filed. If any problems are encountered during the closing process the batch will remain open and the details of the problem will appear on the audit trail. Delete allows you to delete the batch if you decide it is necessary. It is advisable to add a Comment as to why a batch is being deleted as this will appear in the Batch History when auditing. If you want to re-print, or view a batch that has already been closed, just enter the Batch number and press TAB ->. You will see that you only have the Print or View options available. Select which you want to use. Imports allows a CSV file, for example one created in Excel, to be imported. This could be useful where a department has kept a spreadsheet of expenses on a trip or event they are organising, this is detailed later in the chapter. Entering batch items Once you select the Enter items button from the batch header screen the following screen is displayed Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (62)

67 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank The above screen shows a batch into which two items have already been entered. Entering payments The Items screen displays the Batch details at the top of the screen for reference. You will see that as you enter new items, or amend details of existing ones, the information here in red will change. There are a number of checkboxes entry options at the top of the screen after the Batch Details, you can use these to make your entries easier. If checked the Clear screen option will clear the screen after each item and you will need to re-enter all the details of the next entry. If the checkbox is blank, the screen will NOT be cleared, so that you can make use of common data and only enter the differences. You can always use the Clear screen button at the bottom of the screen to clear your screen for the next entry, even if you have no cross in the checkbox. Check the Auto increment pay ref if you are entering payments from a cheque book, it can be convenient to have each pay ref (cheque number) increased by one on each entry. This will happen if you have a cross in the checkbox AND you have a number in the pay ref field. The next item will increase that number by one and present it to you as a default. You can always overwrite this value if you wish. There are up to three ANALYSIS options depending on how your Nominal is set: VAT, Nominal and Project. You may use the check boxes at the top right of the Enter items screen, to control your analysis. If you are unlikely to be analysing transactions, it is better to have these checkboxes blank. This will grey the analysis buttons and will ensure that when you tab through the fields, you will bypass the Analyse buttons, speeding up your input. You can always check the boxes again for the odd item that you may want to Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (63)

68 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank analyse. If you have specified in the Options that you will not be using VAT or Projects these boxes will not be displayed. When you enter this screen, you will be presented with the next sequential Item in the batch. The item number will be displayed in the Item field. Tab through to accept this if you want to enter a new item. When you enter your first item the batch date will be displayed in the Date field but this may be amended to any other date within the same period. The next item you enter will show the date entered for the previous item rather than the batch date. The Supplier Ref will usually be the supplier invoice number. Enter the Name of the person or company to whom the payment is being made. It is important to enter this correctly, especially if you will be using the automatic cheque printing as the cheque will be made out to the name entered here. Enter the Pay method used - eg Cheque, Cash, Standing Order etc. Payment method codes are set up in the Nominal Ledger Options and you must enter a valid code here. The Cheque is the cheque number if you are entering payments that have already been made, however if you are entering payments TO BE MADE, you can leave this blank and then use the automatic cheque production, described later. If you are entering cheques which have already been printed, once you enter the first cheque number the next number will be inserted automatically in the next item with the same pay method, assuming Auto increment pay ref is ticked. So, if you enter an item with pay method CH and ref the next item you enter which has a pay method CH will show ref This may be changed if it is incorrect. You can prevent the references being incremented automatically by 'unchecking' the Auto increment pay ref box at the top of the screen. Statement page number - Bank reconciliations are done by allocating the appropriate bank statement page number to each transaction. This is normally done after batches of payments and receipts have been closed. However, when entering a transaction it is possible that you may already know the statement page number - for example if you are entering standing orders or direct debits directly from a statement. In this case, to save time, you may enter the page number here. It will not then appear on the list of unallocated items when doing the reconciliation. The Goods Amt is the amount of the payment EXCLUDING VAT. However if you cannot reclaim VAT you may decide not to enter the VAT separately, in which case the Goods amount will be the total VAT inclusive figure. If you are using VAT but do not know the VAT exclusive amount you can enter the full amount in the Goods Amt field and then check the Vat inclusive box to indicate that this is a VAT inclusive figure. Then, when you enter the VAT code the VAT will be calculated and deducted from the Goods amt. The new VAT exclusive figure will then be displayed in the Goods amt field and the VAT in the VAT field. On some payments you may find there is VAT at more than one rate. In this case press the Analyse Vat button (see analysing payments below), otherwise enter the VAT code or select from the list of available VAT codes. VAT codes are set up in the Nominal Ledger Options. The VAT amount will be displayed. If this is not correct you may change it - sometimes there is a penny difference due to rounding. You should now enter the Nominal account the payment is to be made to. If you wish to spread the payment over more than one nominal account you should press the Analyse Nom button (see the section on analysing payments below). Otherwise enter the parts of the Nominal Account (division, department and expense). Enter the parts of the Nominal account (division, department and expense). This may be done in one of three ways: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (64)

69 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank 4. Type in the account. If the code you type is a valid code the name of the account will be displayed below. 5. Click on the down arrow to the right of each field to see a list of valid codes. Then click on the one you want. If you are using all three parts of the nominal account the list for the division will contain all valid division codes. Once you have selected one and move on to the department the list will only contain those departments which have accounts set up for the selected division. The expense list will then only contain expense codes which are valid in combination with the selected division and department. If you are using only the department and expense all department codes will be displayed, but only those expense codes valid for the selected department. When you have entered the full nominal account the name will be displayed. 6. Click the Find button. This will allow you to search for an account in a variety of different ways. You can set different search criteria. For example, you may only want to include Profit and Loss accounts. In that case, untick the Balance Sheet check box. You may also want to look for accounts in a particular department. In that case, enter the department code. You can use a Name text search. If you enter a string of characters, surrounded by * you can look for all accounts that have those characters as part of the name. When you have set your criteria, click on Find and all accounts satisfying your criteria will be displayed. Double click on the account you want, or select it and click on OK You may now enter a Project code for the transaction or analyse the transaction across a number of project codes if required. Project codes are optional. See the section on Project codes later in this manual. If you are not using project codes these fields will not be visible on your screen. Finally you should enter a Comment about the transaction. It is always advisable to enter comments as these will be printed in the Bank and Nominal Ledger reports, making these reports more meaningful. Comments can also be searched on. When you have completed the item press the Add button to save the item. It will now be added to the list of items in the box to the right of the screen. The next sequential Item number will be automatically entered and you may now enter the details of the next item in the batch. Use the Quit button to exit back to the Batch header screen. You may leave a batch at any time. All entries which have been completed will be saved and you may return and continue the batch later. When you have entered all the items in your batch, you can post these items to the cash book, and nominal ledger by using the Close button. You will be warned if the batch figures do not agree with the control figures and asked if you wish to continue to Close or to Don t Close. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (65)

70 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank You will then be asked which printer to use for the audit trail. See the section on Printing for more information. The batch will then be closed and transactions will be entered in the Cash book and Nominal Ledger. An audit trail will be printed which should be checked and filed. If any problems are encountered during the closing process the batch will remain open and the details of the problem will appear on the audit trail. See the section on trouble-shooting for information on what to do if this happens. Once closed a batch cannot be amended. Amending or Deleting Item If you find that you need to alter one of the items you have already finished and assuming the batch has not been closed, you will first need to display that item. This may be done in one of the following ways:- 1. Select the item you want from the list to the right of the screen by clicking on it with the mouse. 2. Type the number of the item you want to change in the Item field and TAB ->. Once the details are displayed you may make the necessary changes and then press the Update button to save the changes. To delete the item press the Delete button. If you now have more entries to make you will need to press the Next item button to display the next new sequential Item number. You may use the Clear screen button at any time to clear the screen completely. Analyse Payments Payments may need to be analysed across several different VAT codes, or several different nominal accounts, or several different project codes. If this is the case, you need to click on the appropriate Analyse button and you will be taken into a new screen allowing you to analyse the amount. Analysing VAT The screen analysing an amount across several VAT rates is as shown below: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (66)

71 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank You will need to enter/select the VAT code and the corresponding Goods amount for each part of the analysis. The VAT amount is automatically calculated at the specified rate but you may alter this if necessary. Remember that if you entered the Goods amount as a VAT inclusive amount the goods amount you enter here is also the VAT inclusive amount, and when the VAT is calculated it will be reduced by the VAT amount. Then click the Add button. The items that have been analysed are shown in the list box, so if you need to change anything, you can click on the item and correct the details and then use either the Update or Delete buttons. The Total Goods amount analysed and the total Remaining are shown at the bottom of the screen, as is the Total VAT. You will not be allowed to exit the analysis screen until the total goods amount has been analysed. If you decide to cancel the analysis at any time, click on the Cancel analysis button. If you do this you must either re-do the VAT analysis or enter a single VAT code on the main payment screen. When you have finished analysing VAT for the item, Quit. You will be returned to the enter items screen. You will see that if an item has been analysed, the VAT code and the VAT amount are greyed so that you cannot change them. If you do need to change the VAT details, you will have to click on the Analyse button again. Analyse Nominal Accounts If you need to spread a payment over more than one nominal account you should press the Analyse Nom button. The following screen will be displayed Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (67)

72 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank Select the Nominal account you wish to use using one of the three methods details earlier on entering payments, either by typing, using the drop-down arrows or Find Nominal. The name of the account will be displayed, enter the Amount. You will see that the name of the payee is displayed by default in the Comment field. The comment you enter will appear as part of the nominal transaction that will be generated. To make the comment meaningful, it is a good idea to keep the payee name and append a comment to it. So, when you are presented with the payee name, use the End key to move the cursor to the end of the name. You can now enter an appropriate comment describing that part of the transaction. If you do not want to have the name as part of the comment, just begin typing whilst the payee name is selected (highlighted in blue, as in the example above). When you have entered the comment, click on the Add button. The analysed item will then appear in the list box. If you decide you want to change the analysis, you can click on any of the items in the list box, change the details and then use the Update or Delete buttons. The Total Goods analysed is displayed at the bottom, together with the amount Remaining still to be analysed. You will not be allowed to exit the analysis until the full amount has been analysed. If you want to cancel the analysis at any time, use the Cancel analysis button. If you do this you will need to either re-do the analysis or enter a single nominal code on the main screen. Use Quit to return to the Enter items screen when you have finished. You will note that the nominal account fields are now greyed, preventing you from entering a nominal account. If you decide that you want to amend the analysis you have made, click on the analyse button again. The analysed items will be displayed for you and you can make the changes in the normal way. If you want to cancel the analysis and enter just a single nominal account, you can use the Cancel button. When you return to the Enter items screen you will now be able to enter a nominal account. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (68)

73 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank Analyse Project Codes The screen for analysing project codes is as shown below. Project codes are not mandatory and if they are not setup within your Nominal Ledger Options the Project buttons will not be visible: You should enter a Project code, or select one from the drop down list, and then enter the Amount for that code. Enter a Comment to describe what the payment if is for. Click on the Add button and the item will be entered in the list box. If you need to amend any part of the analysis, just click on the item you want to change, make the changes and use the Update or Delete buttons. The Total goods analysed and Remaining amounts are shown at the bottom of the screen. However, with project analysis you may exit without analysing the whole goods amount by pressing the Quit, in this case you will be shown the following screen: If you pressed the Quit button by accident, click on the Analyse Proj button and you will be able to continue with your analysis. Otherwise, if you really do want to exit, click on the Exit button. It may be that you have set up just a few project codes and that you are interested Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (69)

74 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank only in these. In this case, it is feasible that you may want to only partially analyse a transaction to project codes. As before, when you return to the Enter items screen, you will see that the project code is greyed so that you cannot use it. If you want to change the analysis, you must click on the Analyse Proj button again. Imports There may be occasions when you want to enter the same items every month. For example, you may have direct debits or other standing orders. You can import a batch of items for these. Typically, you would set them up first in a spread-sheet, containing the details. You will then need to save the spreadsheet as a CSV file and use this CSV file as the import file. The spreadsheet should be setup with the following column headings in row 1: Transaction date,supplier Ref,Name,Pay method,cheque number,statement page number,amount,[vat code],[vat Rate], [NL Division],[NL Department],NL Expense, [Project code], comment The items in [square brackets] are optional and would only need to be present if the fields are configured. For example, if you do not have VAT configured, then you need not have columns for [Vat code] and [VAT Rate]. Likewise, if your nominal structure does not use the Division code, you will not need to enter the [NL Division]. Transaction date 22/06/2004 Supplier Ref Pay method Cheque number Statement page number Vat code VAT Rate NL Division NL Department NL Expense Name Amount Lewine Rush CH U ADM 4050 Project code comment imported entry Start a Payments batch in the normal way and from the batch header screen click on the Import button to display the following screen: You have a number of date options that may be useful: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (70)

75 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank You can elect to apply the batch..processing date to all items. This option could be used if your import file is one that you will use frequently. In this case, you need not worry about the date in the import file, and allow the import process to assign one during import. If any items have dates that are not valid, they will always be replaced by the batch..posting date. You can also decide to over-write valid dates with the..processing date, or you can decide to keep the Same day and year, but just amend the month. This may be useful, where you are importing the same file each month. When you have selected your date options, you can select the file you want to import. Click on the Select Import File button. You will be shown a list of all the CSV files in your Oasis\Data directory. CSV files can be created from standard Excel spreadsheets using Save As. Select the one you want to use and click on OK. The list box will be filled with the items in your file. A validation on the nominal accounts is done and any items that do not have a valid account, will be highlighted with a ****Unknown account**** If you do not want to post all the items in the batch, you can select the ones you do not want to transfer, and click on the Remove selected items button. Any items with ****Unknown accounts**** will NOT be imported anyway, so there is no need to remove these. When ready, click on Import, and the items will be transferred into your batch, after you have confirmed that you want to import. The list box is cleared, and you can now select another file for import if you wish. Receipts This program allows you to enter moneys received into one of your bank accounts. The program may also be used to enter payments into the Petty Cash account if you are using the Bank programs for your petty cash. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (71)

76 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank The receipts program is very similar to the Payments program which is documented in detail above. On the Payments screen the Ref may be automatically incremented from the previous one - this is used for entering cheques in number order. This is not relevant with receipts, so does not happen. The 'auto increment pay ref' check box does not appear at the top of the screen. In all other ways the Receipts entry is identical to the Payments entry. Produce Cheques This program allows you to print cheques for payments which have been entered via the Payments program but which have not yet had cheques produced for them. Payments which have not yet been made have no cheque number assigned to them. Cheques cannot be produced using this program for any payment which already has a cheque number assigned. When you select the Cheques option from the Nominal Ledger, Bank menu the following screen is displayed: First select the Bank code you want to print the cheques from. Click on the down arrow to the right for a list of valid bank codes. Cheques will be printed for all the transactions which you now select. These are transactions of the correct type which do not already have cheque numbers and which fall in the ranges you specify. Select the For payment type for cheques, using the down arrow to display a list of all payment types. This will normally be something like CH for cheque. You may also wish to limit which cheques are printed by date by entering dates in the For dates from/to fields, another option being to put in the number of the bank Transactions from/to you want to be included, particularly if it is a specific cheque. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (72)

77 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank Now press the Find button. The program will search for transactions within the date and number ranges, with the type you specified and no cheque number. These will all be displayed in the box on the left of the screen. If you decide that you do not wish to print a cheque for one of these transactions highlight it with the mouse and then press the Remove selected button. The transaction will be removed from the list and no cheque will be printed for that payment. Cheques may be printed with or without updating the files. If the Update box is checked two things will happen:- 1. The cheques will be printed. 2. As each cheque is printed the cheque number will be written into the payments file against that payment. This means that you will not be able to print another cheque for that payment, since payments may only be selected for cheque writing if they have no cheque number. If you print the cheques with no file update - i.e. the Update box is blank - the cheques will be printed but the cheque numbers will not be stored. This option is available because some users prefer to print the cheques, make sure there are no problems with the printer or the way the cheques are lined up, and then update them afterwards. However if you do use this method YOU MUST UPDATE THE CHEQUES IMMEDIATELY AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN PRINTED. If you forget to update the cheques they may be selected for your next print run as they will still have no cheque numbers. If you are updating the files you must enter the Start Cheque number. This is the number of the first cheque which will actually be printed. You should check this when you have loaded the cheque stationery in the printer. It is very important to enter the first number which will actually be printed on here, since this will be written against the first payment, and all subsequent payments will get the next number in sequence. When you have filled in the screen press the Produce cheques button. The cheques will then be printed. You will first be asked for the format of the cheque. Cheque layouts are designed in the same way as user definable reports. See that section of the manual for information on designing the cheque format. Once you have selected the format you want to use you will need to select the printer. Amend Narrative Details Once you have entered a payment or receipt and closed the batch, most of the information you have entered may not be changed. However, some of the non financial information may be changed without affecting the integrity of your data. The Amend narrative details program under Bank allows you to change information such as the Payee, comment, cheque number and statement page number allocated to a payment or receipt. This would come in particularly useful, for example, if you wished to print cheques but found that you had entered the wrong name on a payment. If you change the Payee here and then print cheques the cheque will be printed for the new name. Also automatic cheques are only printed for those payments which do not have a cheque number allocated. So, if you accidently entered a cheque number when entering a payment it will not be picked up on an automatic cheque run, use amend narrative details to remove the cheque number allowing the cheque to be printed. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (73)

78 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank You must first enter the Bank code and Transaction number of the item you want to amend and press TAB. If you do not know the transaction number but it is a recent transaction, select the bank code and click Last this will take you to the last transaction through the bank. Use the Previous button until you arrive at the required transaction. If the item exists, the details are displayed and you can amend details of the transaction Reference, the Name on the transaction, the payment method (How paid), the Payment reference (cheque number), the Statement page number and the Comment. When you have made the changes, click on the Update button to save the changes. Bank Reconciliation Bank reconciliation is done by assigning bank statement page numbers to transactions. Having done this, you can produce a bank statement report which should match the actual statements received from the bank and show the same brought forward and carried forward figures as the statements themselves. This will allow you to do a quick and easy visual check. The first stage is to allocate the page number to all transactions which appear on a particular bank statement. Click on Nominal Ledger, Bank, Bank Rec: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (74)

79 Nominal Ledger Manual Bank When you enter the program, you should first identify the Bank code. Initially, all transactions for that bank code, having a zero page number, will be displayed in the list box on the right, uncleared items the Total value of which is displayed at the bottom of the screen. You should then enter a page number you wish to assign to your selected transactions in the Page number to assign field. Transactions may be selected from the list in the following ways: 1. You may select a single transaction by clicking on it with the mouse or using the up and down arrow keys to position the highlight bar over it. Then press the Assign page to selections button. The transaction now has a statement page number so is removed from the list of unallocated transactions. 2. Select a group of transactions together by clicking on the first one and holding the mouse button down whilst moving/dragging to the last of the group. The whole group will be highlighted and the value of the Total Selected will be displayed at the bottom of the dialog box. Press the Assign page to selections button and the transactions will be removed from the unallocated transactions. 3. To select a number of transactions which are not together - as has been done in the example above, hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard and select the transactions you want by clicking on them or clicking and dragging the mouse over a group of transactions. Keep the CTRL key held down the whole time. Then click the assign button and the transactions will be removed from the list. To allocate a different statement page number to other transactions just change the Page number to allocate and select the transactions for that statement. To see the transactions allocated to a particular statement enter it in the Page number to find. All the transactions with that page number will be displayed, and if any are incorrect you can select them and assign a different page number to them. If you assign a page number to a transaction by mistake you can simply assign page 0 to that transaction - Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (75)

80 Nominal Ledger Manual Audit effectively making it unallocated again using Amend narrative details explained previously. You can print a Statements report at any time, using the print button. See Bank statements report below for more information on this report and how to print it. Audit The Audit menu contains a number of programs which allow you to produce information your auditors may require, or allow you to view individual transactions in detail. The audit menu contains the following options. Batch History allows you to print details of the batches - when they were opened and closed, the batch control figures and any amendments to them. Transactions prints a detailed transaction report with an option to set various ranges such as date and transaction number. This option is particularly useful when trying to establish the route of a problem, for example raised through a File Health. View Nominal Transaction allows you to view on the screen the complete details of a single nominal ledger entry. No details may be changed. View Bank Transaction allows you to view on the screen the complete details of a single payment or receipt. The details may not be changed. All these programs are described in detail below. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (76)

81 Nominal Ledger Manual Audit Batch History This program allows you to print a report of the batches you have used. When you select the option the following screen is displayed: First select the Batch Type you wish to report on by clicking on the option you want or using the arrow keys to move the highlight. Bank allows you to select the Bank Ref (Bank Account) you wish to Audit. Journals, Accruals and Prepayments are not specific to one particular Bank Account so the Bank Ref is not required. In addition other criteria can be set to isolate the batches you wish to audit: If you only want batches opened within a certain time period enter an Opening date from/to range. You may include All batch numbers or enter a range of Numbers from/to. To do this first 'uncheck' the All batch numbers box and then enter the range you want. You may restrict the report to any combination of Open batches, Closed batches, Deleted batches by checking the appropriate boxes. It can be quite useful to check whether any batches have been left Open accidently. Once you have filled in the screen press View to check the right selections have been made. To come out of the View click the Close cross top right. Click the Report button to print the report. You will need to specify the printer to use. See the section on Printing for more information on this. The report will be printed shortly. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (77)

82 Nominal Ledger Manual Audit Beavers Training School Batch report 21/01/98 Page 1 Dates from 01/01/01 to 31/12/99 Batches 0 to 9999 Bank batches ============ Account code: TA Payments CBP 1 Opened: 21/01/98 Posting: 21/01/98 Closed: 21/01/98 *Closed* Control Totals: Batch Totals: Control Account: G/10/120/ January Payments Receipts CBR 2 Opened: 21/01/98 Posting: 21/01/98 Closed: 21/01/98 *Closed* Control Totals: Batch Totals: Control Account: G/10/120/ January Receipts CBR 3 Opened: 21/01/98 Posting: 21/01/98 Closed: 21/01/98 *Closed* Control Totals: Batch Totals: Control Account: G/10/120/ January receipts Transactions This program allows you to print details of nominal ledger transactions in transaction or date order. The report which is printed is similar to the Account report in the reports menu, but the order is different. It is useful to print a report in transaction order for checking the integrity of the data. Tool tips are available on this screen, hover the mouse over an option to see a tool tip describing the options purpose. You may print the report in Transaction date, Entry date or Transaction number order. By default Transaction number is selected as this is the most useful order when trying to trace the origins of an error as it follows exactly the sequence a user has taken regardless of dates. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (78)

83 Nominal Ledger Manual Audit Additional selection criteria are available: By default For all applications, eg fees, Bank, Purchase ledger etc, is selected but you may choose a single application by unticking For all applications and then selecting applications that are not required for audit and using either the Delete key on the keyboard or the Remove Selected button on the dialog box. By default All batch types, eg NLJ (Nominal Ledger Journals), CBP (Cash Book Payments) etc, is selected but you may choose any combination of batch types by unticking All batch types and then selecting batch types that are not required for audit and using either the Delete key on the keyboard or the Remove Selected button on the dialog box. Alternatively for All batch types remove those items you wish to report on leaving only those to be excluded and tick Exclude. The Audit can be run for only transaction affecting specific Divisions, Department or Expense codes within the Nominal Coding Structure. Use NL Div, NL Dep and/or NL Expense. Left blank all Nominal codes will be included. The audit can also be restricted to a specific Date range from/to. This is also true for Transaction numbers from/to. Audit will be restricted to transactions having selected text anywhere in the Comment. Tick Exclude to exclude transactions with the selected text. Wildcard characters are not needed for this search. An Audit can be restricted to only pickup transactions within a given range of financial values using Values from/to. When searching for specific values you may be unsure whether they are positive or negative, if this is the case tick Include debits and credit amounts. You may print a Summary or a detailed report, Summary is one line per transaction and does not include any transaction comments. Click Print Preview to review your selection and if correct and you require a hard copy click Close to return to the Audit screen. The audit report can be printed to paper or to an electronic file as a PDF (Portable Document Format). To print to PDF ensure a tick is in PDF output and click Print, accept the default printer and click Print a file will be produced in your Oasis\Data folder called similar to NFH16-Nov To simple print the report to paper, untick PDF output and click Print View Nominal Transaction This program allows you to view a single nominal ledger transaction on the screen, in great detail. When you first enter the program the screen is blank, and you must first select the transaction you wish to view. This may be done by Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (79)

84 Nominal Ledger Manual Audit typing in the Transaction number or by using the First, Last, Next and Previous buttons. When you do this the details of the transaction will be displayed, but they will be greyed as they may not be changed. The transaction number is the only field on this screen which may be amended. The Type shows A for Accruals, P for Prepayments and J for Journals and entries from other sources such as the Bank. The nominal Account code is displayed, together with the Sort code if used. The Date and Amount of the transaction is displayed. Application is the application where the transaction originated - eg CPB or CPR for Cash Book Payment or Cash Book Receipt. App ref is not currently used. The Batch/Item where the transaction originated are displayed. In the case of cash book entries the User Ref shows the Bank account. For cash book entries the Comment shows the payee and the comment. You may move forwards and backwards through the transactions, by nominal transaction number, using the First, Last, Next and Previous buttons. Press the Quit button to exit the screen. View Bank transaction This program allows you to view individual bank payments or receipts in detail on the screen in a similar way to the View nominal transaction. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page (80)

85 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Management Accounts Management Accounts are distinctly different from other reporting options within OASIS as they allow for the accumulation of multiple Nominal Codes into a single heading. For example, Fees Income can be setup to contain a single total combining both the Upper and Lower school Fees Income. Note that although Management Accounts allow for multiple nominals to be assigned against a single heading, it is still possible to have a single heading with one nominal assigned if required. There are three stages to setting up management accounts in OASIS: The setting up of the various headings which appear on the left of your report, known as a Template; the Assigning of nominals to the accumulator headings in a template and the creation of a.nsd or.nsx through File, Text Editor, to determine which figures, actual, budget etc appear against each heading. Templates Click Nominal Ledger, Reports, Management Reports, Template. Enter a Template name of not more than 5 alphanumeric characters, for example PL for Profit and Lost or BS for Balance Sheet Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 81

86 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Enter Line Ids that will allow for lines to be inserted at a later date should they occur, for example increment in 5 s or10 s and remember that the numbering is alphanumeric so start with 0005 or The Description is the narrative as will be displayed on the final report and should therefore be typed in the case and manner in which you wish to see it. The Description is used for all aspects of the template: Headings, Accumulators and Totals. Where the line being set-up will have a credit/income amount against it, then tick Income. Note that for any budget figures, whether the budget is classed as Income, is determined in the original Nominal Account Creation when a user sets up an account as either Credit or Debit, covered earlier in this manual. Select the Type of Description/Line you have entered. For purely cosmetic headings tick Heading, for lines where amounts are to be accumulated from a variety of nominals tick Accumulator and where a total is to be displayed Total. For Type Total only a Subtype number must be entered, indicating what prior level of subheading the total is to sum: Income Actuals SubType Fees Income 100,000 Other Income 25,000 Total Income 125,000 2 Expenditure Salaries Admin 10,000 Teaching 20,000 Total Salaries 30,000 1 Materials Office 100 Academic 500 Total Materials To sum all Subtypes 1 above or in this case where no SubType 1 are present sum all preceding actuals. To sum all actuals immediately above the total upto the next SubType To sum all actuals immediately above the total upto the next SubType Total Expenditure 30,600 2 To sum all SubType 1 above Net Surplus 94,400 3 To sum all SubType 2 above Note that Total Income is set to SubType 2 but this is so the Net Surplus can Net the Total Expenditure and Total Income. Where no previous SubTypes are present the amounts immediately above are summed. Number of preceding blank lines is a cosmetic setting and you can see that 1 has been set against the Expenditure Heading in the example above. Form feed is a cosmetic setting and can be used to print, for example Income on one page and Expenditure on another. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 82

87 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Tick Print zero balance lines if you wish the line to appear even if no money has been accumulated against it. This option is the same as Include zero balance accounts in the Trial Balance report. Always tick Schedule as this gives the user the option to print the breakdown of each Accumulator by its assigned nominals, providing detail if requested. A variety of Underlines are available. Note that as underline they often need to be set against the line previous to give the illusion of a line above and below on totals. Once a line has been fully defined click Add to save and display it in the Existing lines list box. To change or delete a line, select it from the Existing lines list box and either make a change clicking Update to save, or click Delete Line to remove. Where a second similar management report is required, select the Template the new report is to be based on and click New Template. Enter a New template name and indicate which lines are to be included on the new template using For lines from and to. Note that the line numbers are alphanumeric so may have prefixing zeros. Where not all numbers are being included in the new template it is possible to Renumber the lines. If the nominal assignments to the accumulators is to be much the same between the two templates tick Include account assignments. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 83

88 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts To save the new template click Create Template. To leave the Create Report Template dialog box click Quit. Assign Accounts Once the headings have been entered into the management account template, the nominals must be assigned to the accumulator headings. Click Nominal Ledger, Reports, Management Reports, Assign Accounts, or from the button in the corner of the Create Report Template dialog box or select Assign Accounts from the second toolbar if it is displayed. Select the previously created Template from the list of Report types. All lines of Type: Accumulator will be displayed in the Lines list box. Select the first Accumulator from the list box. The middles section of the dialog box is an area where the user can set criteria to Find accounts that go against an accumulator. In the screen capture above no BS (Balance Sheet) or Expenditure accounts will be displayed and only accounts within the range From L/INC/1000 to U/INC/1000 will be listed on clicking Find accounts. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 84

89 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Click Find accounts and select using Ctrl and Click for a mixture of the Available accounts or Click and Shift Click on the last account to select all Available accounts. Once selected click Assign thereby Remove(ing) acts from list box and transferring them to Assigned accounts where they will be displayed in red. Note the same Nominal can NOT be assigned twice accidentally. Repeat this process until all accumulator and their corresponding nominals have been assigned then click Quit. Tip: Should the wrong list of Available accounts be listed click Clear prior to clicking Find accounts again. Tip: To ensure all Nominals have been assigned, click either PL or BS according to your report and leave all other criteria on their default. Click Find accounts and any Available accounts listed have NOT been assigned to an accumulator and will not appear in the management report. These nominals should either be assigned to a Line/Accumulator or should be nominals without balances. Setting the Columns (NSD / NSX) To setup the column headings and to indicate what figures are required, actuals, budget, it is necessary to create a report template based on one of the default templates provided by Beaver Software. Click File, Text Editor followed by File, Open select ACCTS.NSD Once open click File, Save As adding your or the schools initials to differentiate the template from and protect the default. The column headings are already positioned appropriately, it is fine to overtype these but maintain their position. The actual figures that will be reported are in <angled brackets> below Line:, substitute into these brackets the field name you require from those listed towards the end of these notes. Be aware that CUMACTC will give CUMulative ACTuals Current always from period 1 whereas PERACTC will give PERiod ACTuals Current between the periods stated on running the report. For example on running the report for periods 3-6 CUMACTC will actually provide actuals for periods 1-6 where as PERACTC will only be 3-6. Note that the field names are case sensitive and must be entered in the same format as listed at the end of this manual. Spacing between each numeric column should be at least 15 characters apart. The first numeric column should be positioned at the left hand margin, the template headings as setup previously will then be dropped to the left/in front. Once complete click File, Exit clicking Save when prompted. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 85

90 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Printing Management Accounts Once all three steps are complete the management report can be printed: click Nominal Ledger, Reports, Management Reports, Management Report or select Management Report from the second toolbar if it is displayed. Select the previously created template from For report type. Enter For periods from / to, remembering the from period is only used where the PERACT fields have been entered into the template. Click the Default Report Format button and change to the Oasis\Data directory to select the ACCTSnn.NSD created previously. If the selected report format is always to be used in conjunction with this Management Report click Save this format for current template which is in line with Default Report Format. This stops you having to always select a format for printing. The Default Export format and other export options: Include Headers on export and Include totals on export are detailed later in this chapter. Tick Exclude schedules to print a standard management report, if ticked each accumulator will be detailed at the end of the report creating a large document. Click View or Report. Beaver Format Beavers Training School Management Reports Actual Budget Test Management Account Income Fees Income 97, Sundry Income Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 86

91 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Total Income 97, (Level Two Total) ========= Comment [IBS1]: Expenditure Salaries Admin Teachers 19, , Total Salaries 19, , (Level One Total) Materials Office Teaching 3, Total Materials 4, (Level One Total) Total Expenditure 23, , (Level Two Total) ========= ========= Net Surplus 73, (Level Three Total) ======= Schedule Fees Income L/INC/1000 Junior Income Tuition Fees 40, U/INC/1000 Main Income Tuition Fees 57, Total 97, Sundry Income L/ART/1500 Junior Art Sales to pupils U/ART/1500 Main Art Sales Total Admin U/ADM/2000 Total Main Admin Salaries Teachers L/TCH/2000 Junior Teaching Depts Salaries 5, L/SPO/2000 Junior Sports Salaries 1, L/ART/2000 Junior Art Salaries U/TCH/2000 Main Teaching Depts Salaries 8, , U/SPO/2000 Main Sports Salaries 1, U/ART/2000 Main Art Salaries Total 19, , Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 87

92 Nominal Ledger Manual Management Accounts Office U/ADM/4000 Main Admin Equipment U/ADM/4010 Main Admin Materials U/ADM/4030 Main Admin Stationery Total Teaching L/TCH/4000 Junior Teaching Depts Equipment L/TCH/4010 Junior Teaching Depts Materials L/TCH/4020 Junior Teaching Depts Books L/SPO/4000 Junior Sports Equipment L/ART/4000 Junior Art Equipment L/ART/4010 Junior Art Materials U/TCH/4000 Main Teaching Depts Equipment U/TCH/4010 Main Teaching Depts Material U/TCH/4020 Main Teaching Depts Books U/SPO/4000 Main Sports Equipment U/ART/4000 Main Art Equipment U/ART/4010 Main Art Materials Total 3, Beavers Training School Management Reports Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 88

93 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Excel Management Accounts Management Account Template When creating the management account template exclusively for exporting to Excel it is only necessary to include the Accumulators and to ensure that Print Zero Balance Lines and Schedule are both ticked for each Accumulator. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 89

94 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Creating an Export format.nsx Select File, Text Editor File, New or File, Open to edit an existing.nsx, for example ACC.NSX. If opening an OASIS.NSX use File, Save As and add your schools initials, for example Beaver Schools=ACCBS.NSX On the first line type Line: followed on the next line by,[cumactc],[cumbudc],[abudget] Note that the second line must start with a comma, this allows the descriptions such as Fees Income to be inserted prior to the columns of figures once the data is exported. A list of the available fields that can be exported are listed on the following page. This list is NOT definitive but a logical pattern in field names can be assumed. Save the file using not more than 8 alphanumeric characters and adding a suffix of.nsx. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 90

95 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Management Account Fields CUMACTC Cumulative balance from period 1 to the end of the last period selected. Note that if you choose to print the report for periods 3-6 the balance printed here would be the cumulative balance for period 6 INCLUDING periods 1 and 2. PERACTC Balance for selected period, for example selecting to print the report for periods 3-6 the balance printed here would be the cumulative balance for period 6 EXCLUDING periods 1 and 2. PERBUDC Cumulative budget balance for the selected periods only. CUMACTP As CUMACTC but for the previous year CUMBUDP As CUMBUDC but for the previous year PERACTP As PERACTC for the previous year PERBUDP As PERBUDC for the previous year CUMACTCD As CUMACTC but only debit balances will be printed CUMBUDCD As CUMBUDC only showing debit balances PERACTCD As PERACTC only showing debit balances PERBUDCD As PERBUDC only showing debit balances CUMACTPD As CUMACTP only showing debit balances CUMBUDPD As CUMBUDP only showing debit balances PERACTPD As PERACTP only showing debit balances PERBUDPD As PERBUDP only showing debit balances CUMACTCC As CUMACTC but only credit balances will be printed CUMBUDCC As CUMBUDC only showing credit balances PERACTCC As PERACTC only showing credit balances PERBUDCC As PERBUDC only showing credit balances CUMACTPC As CUMACTP only showing credit balances CUMBUDPC As CUMBUDP only showing credit balances PERACTPC As PERACTP only showing credit balances PERBUDPC As PERBUDP only showing credit balances PPERACTP Cumulative balance to beginning of start period, last year PPERACTC Cumulative balance to beginning of start period, this year PPERBUDP Cumulative budget to beginning of start period of last year PPERBUDC Cumulative budget to beginning of start period, this year PABudget Previous year annual budget PActual Annual spend for last year Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 91

96 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Exporting from Beaver Select Nominal Ledger, Reports, Management Reports, Reports Select the previously created template from For report type. Enter For periods from / to, remembering the from period is only used where the PERACT fields have been entered into the template. Click the Default Export Format button and change to the Oasis\Data directory to select the ACCTSnn.NSX created previously. As the same export format is normally used when exporting this Management Report click Save this format for current template which is in line with Default Export Format. Decide whether to Include Headers (and Totals) on export. Optionally Exclude schedules. When exporting schedules are exported to a separate default file called mresched.csv into the Oasis\Data folder which can be imported into Excel if required. Click on the Export button naming the file using no more than 8 alphanumeric characters and then suffix the name with.csv. If prompted click on Overwrite. To be able to simply refresh your management reports in Excel, it is essential that you export using the same filename overwriting obsolete data with new. OASIS Management Report Export Excel Refresh.CSV Temporary Data Transfer File Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 92

97 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Setting Up Excel Open your existing Management Accounts spreadsheet A B C D E 1 Test Management Accounts 2 3 C:\oasis\data\[MgmtActs.xls]Inc&Exp 4 5 ACTUAL BUDGET VARIANCE % 6 INCOME 7 8 Fees Income Sundry Income Total Income EXPENDITURE Salaries 16 Admin Teachers Total Salaries Materials 23 Office Teaching Total Materials Total Expenditure Surplus (Deficit) Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 93

98 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Click Insert an additional Worksheet and rename it by double clicking on the sheets tab and typing Import Click into A3 of the new Import sheet. Click Data, Import External Data, Import Data or in Excel 2007 on the Data ribbon and then From Text. Locate the.csv file you exported from the Management Reports screen. The file is normally located in the Oasis Data directory. The Text Import Wizard is displayed: Select Delimited and click Next If necessary deselect Tab and select Comma and click Finish and OK. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 94

99 Nominal Ledger Manual Excel Management Accounts Vlookup On the mainsheet of your management accounts, click on the first figure to be extracted from Oasis, B8. It is essential that the headings on the main sheet match exactly those exported from Beaver. Enter the following formula: =Vlookup(cell,ImportData,Column_number,False) Lookup_Value or cell Table_Array Col_Index_Num False Cell address containing heading to be looked up, for example Fees Income A8 Highlight the range of Columns occupied by the imported data. For example 2 would return Cummulative Actuals in this example as it is the second column in the imported data. This forces Excel to lookup text in the first column of the import rather than numbers, the default. Consider using the Paste Function Wizard to help you: click Fx on the formula bar, select Lookup and Reference from the drop down Select a Category and then select Vlookup OK. Complete the dialog box as per the diagram below. Copy the formula for the rest of the column and where necessary other columns of your spreadsheet. Remember if you are looking to pick Annual Budget you would need to change the column number to 4. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 95

100 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Nominal Ledger Year end procedures As discussed in the general information section of the manual, the Year End process can either bring forward balances for your balance sheet accounts, or not. It can also carry forward a profit and loss figure into your P and L account. This would be the normal way of running the year end. On completion of the process the following will have been done: A balance brought forward figure will be accumulated for your balance sheet accounts and a transaction will have been generated for these. All P & L transactions will have been removed up to the beginning of the new year. The P & L Figure will have been entered as a transaction and will have been posted under your P & L account. The period dates will have been changed and balances for the periods adjusted. Data will have been stored into 'last years' figures, allowing you to do comparisons between the New Year and the previous year. Before running your Year End, you need to check that your data has no problems or corruptions. Do this by running a Nominal Ledger File Health, having first amended your File Health Options. Nominal Ledger, Options, File Health Options should be set as follows: Untick the NL Entries since transaction, but leave the number as it is in the box to the right. Check the other options as shown above and then run your File Health. You should now look at the resulting print and check that the block of numbers in the Expected and Counted rows are identical. NL Transaction File Entries =========================== Data records Indexes: Div Dept Expense Sort Trans Date Number Batch Entry Date Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 96

101 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Expected: Counted: If they are not, it indicates that you may have a corrupt index. If this is the case, you will need to do a File Rebuild. Before you do a rebuild, you should take a backup of your data. You should also check that nobody is accessing the Nominal Ledger or Purchase Ledger and that no transfers are made from Payroll to Nominal or receipts into Fees. You may also need to have administrator rights to do a rebuild. If the File Health indicates you need to do a rebuild, DO NOT PROCEDE WITH YEAR END UNTIL THIS HAS BEEN DONE! After a rebuild, you should use Nominal Ledger, Options, Recalculate TB for For All Accounts and All Periods. The File Health will also check that there are no transactions with dates outside of the current accounting periods that are set in Nominal Ledger, Options, Period dates. If the File Health shows any such transactions, call Beaver at once. Before running your year end, you should produce a Trial Balance up to the end of the year, typically periods You should also produce a Trial Balance from period 1 to period 16. After your year end, you should compare the Balance Sheet accounts and ensure the balances are the same. Accruals and Pre-payments reversals You will not be allowed to do your year end until all accruals and pre-payments have been reversed. Setting up Accruals and Prepayments and their reversal is covered in the Transactions section of this manual. Year End Copy When you have done your reversals, you should do the year end copy, using Nominal Ledger, Year End Copy program. The Year End Copy program will copy your existing data to a sub-folder of your normal data folder. It will set up all necessary links to allow you to access this data. The NLYCOPY program will copy your data and set up an alternate company path to it. The Year End Copy program is accessed through the Nominal Ledger menu. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 97

102 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures When you run this program, you will be shown a screen describing the process By default, the current year, less one, is shown for the year beginning. The School/Company name will, by default, take the current name with the year( ) appended. This can be changed by the user if necessary. The folder the data will be copied to will, by default, be a subfolder of your normal data folder, called NLxxxx where xxx is the year. Again, this can be amended, and if you use the Browse button, you can copy the data to some other folder of your choice. If you would like the colour to be different when you log into the previous year s data, you can use the New Colour button to select a colour. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 98

103 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Move your cursor to the colour palette on the right to select the colour you would like to use, then click on OK. When done, just click on the Copy files button. This will copy your nominal data including management report data and formats to your selected folder. The process will add the folder path to your Alternate paths, so you can now access this data by using File/Alternate Companies/Switch Company. When you have done the copy, check that this has worked correctly. NO NEW DESKTOP SHORTCUT WILL BE GENERATED. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 99

104 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Select the Alternate Company (your new company name you gave in the first screen) from the drop down list, so that the folder path shows. Then click on Switch. You will be presented with a new logon screen (with the colour you specified earlier). Log on as normal to get to your previous year s data. The new company name will be what you entered in your initial screen, and your Nominal Ledger User Name will also have been changed to include the ( ). If you have already done a year end copy, and try to do it again using the same company name, the program will tell you that the alternate company path already exists and will not do any copying. If you remove the alternate company path using Alternate Companies/Alternate Company Folders, you will be able to do the year end copy again. If copying to the same folder as before, existing files will not be over-written unless you have the Overwrite existing files option ticked. The result of this is that your nominal data will have been copied to a subfolder of your data folder. The name of this sub-folder is just NL followed by the accounting year. Before you run the year end itself, we would strongly advise that you take another separate backup. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 100

105 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Rename the output file (normally nlback.zip) to something meaningful, as in the example above, and then click on Backup. When you have done this, you can run your year end, clearing down all P&L accounts and bringing forward balances on Balance Sheet accounts. Run your year end in your normal live data NOT in the copy you previously created using the NLYCOPY process. Year End You can now run your year end IN YOUR NORMAL OASIS ICON - ** NOT IN THE NEWLY CREATED ONE ON THE DESKTOP ** - Nominal Ledger, Period End, Year End Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 101

106 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures You will normally not need to change any of the defaults that have been set. Just click on Do year end and await the print. Some schools may want to totally clear the Nominal Ledger up to the beginning of the new year, and then enter Brought Forward Balances by means of journals produced by the auditors. If this is the case, you will need to uncheck the options to Bring forward Balance Sheet balances and Carry forward profit/loss You will normally never need to check the option Do not update dates and previous year details. If this is checked the period dates will not be moved on to the next year after the year end process. Opening Trial Balance for new year After you have done your year end, you may want to print an opening Trial Balance i.e. a list of all the balances brought forward. This can be achieved using Nominal Ledger, Audit, Transactions and set the options as below: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 102

107 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Year end procedures Untick All batch types, select all but NLY and click Remove selected. This will print all transactions having a reference of NLY i.e. only those that were produced from the year end process. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 103

108 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Bank Purging Nominal Ledger Bank Purging Despite the Nominal Ledger having a Year End process that purges the Profit and Loss Transactions for the past year, no other aspects of the ledger are purged. This means that for example the Bank transaction could have been being stored since you first purchased the ledger. As the size of your Nominal Ledger increases over the years due to the Bank data, the time taken to do a number of functions and to run certain reports can take some time, particularly if you are running the system on a network shared my many other users. A way of dealing with this is to do a Bank Purge. This will allow you to remove transaction prior to a given date. In order that you don t lose any data that you may subsequently need to access, we would recommend that you copy your existing data to a different folder. You will then be able to access this whenever you need by using the alternate company facility in OASIS or by setting up a separate shortcut to access it. If, for example, your data is held in F:\OASIS\DATA you could create another folder to hold the archive data. This could be F:\OASIS\ARCHIVE09 Once you have created this folder, you will need to copy the file NLFILE00 to it, along with the file OSFILE00 which contains permissions for accessing the file. When you have done this, you can set a path to it using the File, Alternate Company, Set Alternate Company Folders facility, or you can create a new shortcut on your desktop with a name of Archive, a Target of F:\OASIS\PROGS\OASIS.EXE and a Start In of F:\OASIS\ARCHIVE09 When you have done this, make sure you can access the new data. Once you are in OASIS in the archive data, you can set the File, Set Company Name to show Archive data and change the OASIS colour to make sure you are aware that you are working in an archive. You should also set the School name of Archive in Nominal Ledger, Options, User Name Once this has been done, you are almost ready to do the purging. Before you do, you should take a backup even though you have now a copy of your data in the archive folder. You should also make sure that you have the latest versions of all your programs. Backup Select Nominal Ledger, System Options, Backup. Change the Output File name to reflect the date but do not exceed 8 characters for the name and ensure the name is suffixed with.zip Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 104

109 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Bank Purging Click Backup. Once prompted Backup complete click OK and Quit. You can now begin the purging process. Bank Purge Within the nominal ledger, you can purge Bank files, Project Analysis and VAT files. For each of these files, you have a choice of bringing forward balances, or not. You would normally do this with the Bank, but need not with the VAT and Project Files. If you decide to bring forward a balance, you will need to give a date to which the balance should be calculated. These dates may be different for the different files. Select Nominal Ledger, Period End, Purge. Tick Bank and Balance to be bought forward. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 105

110 Nominal Ledger Manual Nominal Ledger Bank Purging Enter a To Date. Transactions up to and including the date specified will be purged and a bank transaction (CBU) dated on the To Date with the name and comment Bank purge brought forward will be generated. Select the Bank Account to be purged. If required tick Project Analysis, VAT and Nominal Analysis, again specifying a To Date and if required ticking Balance to be bought forward. Click Purge files the following dialog box will be displayed This is the Bank purge brought forward transaction mentioned previously. A message announcing as each option is completed will be displayed, click OK. Once all ticked options have been completed repeat for any other Bank Accounts you have in your system that require purging. File Fix Now all obsolete records have been removed from the Bank, within the Nominal Ledger it is necessary for the file to be compacted down in size, before it benefits from the removed data. Before you do this, you will need to take another backup. As before, select Nominal Ledger, System Options, Backup. This time, select a different output filename from the one you used when you took your first backup. When you have done this, click on Nominal Ledger, System Options, NL File Fix Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 106

111 Nominal Ledger Manual User Definable Reports Ensure All Files is ticked prior to clicking Fix Files. You will be prompted as to whether you wish to Continue. Click Continue the following message will be displayed. The message File Filled. Zero Errors should be displayed at the end of the process, click OK. Finally DO ANOTHER FILE HEALTH and compare with the first one. In particular, compare the individually listed Bank Balances and the overall total ledger balance. User Definable Reports Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 107

112 Nominal Ledger Manual User Definable Reports The Beavers Accounts System provides a number of standard reports - account reports, trial balance, transaction reports etc. However, in addition to these you may design your own reports so that you see the data you want in the format you want. In each case you simply specify where you want the accounts data to be placed, and when the report is printed it will include all the selected data. You may also design your own cheques. This section explains how to set up formats for the different types of reports and cheques. It is structured as follows:- General Section on setting up format files Codes which may be used in account reports Codes which may be used in trial balances Codes which may be used in transaction reports Codes which may be used in budget reports Codes which may be used on cheques. Examples will be provided within each section. Codes which may be used within Special Management report format files are described within the Management Report section earlier in this manual. Setting up format files Format files are set up using File, Text Editor from within Oasis. The format file consists of Text which will be printed exactly as it is put into the format file and Fields which will be replaced with data from the Accounts System. The Fields are enclosed in either square brackets [], angle brackets <>, or curly brackets {}. [] Fields enclosed in square brackets will be printed where the left bracket appears and text to the right will be shifted along to allow the whole field to be printed. e.g. Account:[Name] Balance:... would be printed as:- Account:Current Account Balance:... Account:PAYE Balance:... Take care to allow for text being moved to the right where the data is long - don't use very long lines of text with a field, such as a name in the middle as this might cause the end of the line to be lost. <> Fields enclosed in angle brackets will be printed in exactly the position they appear. However, if the data is longer than the field, any text or field to the right will be overwritten. e.g. Account:<Name> Balance:... might be printed as:- Account:Current Account:... Account:PAYE Balance:... In particular note that if you have two fields enclosed by angle brackets the second field will not be picked up if the first one is too long, e.g. <Name>, <CBalance> might be printed as Current Accountce> This is because 'Current Account' overwrites the next angle bracket and CBalance is no longer recognised as a field. {} Fields enclosed in curly brackets will be printed in exactly the position they appear and will be truncated to fit the width between the angle brackets. This avoids the Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 108

113 Nominal Ledger Manual User Definable Reports problem you may have with angle brackets, and allows you to print narrow columns which may contain information of varying length. Make sure you allow enough space between the brackets to make the data meaningful, even if it is truncated, e.g. Account:{Name} Balance:... might be printed as:- Account:Current Acc Balance:... Account:PAYE Balance:... You need to decide carefully when to use each type of bracket. In different situations each is useful, or may cause problems. In general, in the middle of a line, e.g. in a letter, square brackets will be most useful, as long as you allow for the width of the data. If you wish to print lists with columns of data, angle brackets or curly brackets will allow you to position the columns more easily. Where the columns are narrow it is best to use curly brackets, but if the columns are wide, angle brackets will allow you to print all the data, without it being truncated. Saving Format files Format files should be saved into the Oasis\Data folder and they should be saved with names which indicate their type, as the programs will look for files with particular extensions. Account Reports should have.nar extensions, e.g. aclist.nar, acbals.nar Account exports should have.nex extensions, e.g. aclist.nex Trial Balance should have.ntb extensions, e.g. actbud.ntb, tb1.ntb Transaction reports should have.nlr extensions, e.g. sumrep.nlr, detail.nlr Budget reports should have.nbr extensions, e.g. budact.nbr, cumbud.nbr Bank reports should have.rep extensions Cheques should have.chq extensions, e.g. cheque.chq Management reports should have.nsd extensions, e.g. pl.nsd, rep1.nsd Codes which may be used in account reports The following codes may be used in account reports. This list is followed by examples. Note that many of the fields have a small n at the end, eg CPAn, CPACn. This indicates that a period or quarter number must be specified to replace this n, eg CPA10 would be period 10 - the field shows Current year actual balance for the period specified. Periods fall in the range 1 to 16, qarters in the range 1 to 4. Note that upper and lower case for field codes is important - fields must be specified exactly as in the following list. Name Sort Div Dep Act CPAn CPACn PPAn The account name or description The sort code allocated to the account The division - the first part of the nominal account code. The Department - the second part of the nominal account code. The Expense - the last part of the nominal account code. Current Year Period (as opposed to quarter) Actual balance. The 'n' at the end of the field must be replaced by the period you want, in the range1-16. eg CPA12 would be the Current Year Actual balance for period 12. Current period Actual cumulative balance for the period specified. Previous Year Actual figure for the period specified. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 109

114 Nominal Ledger Manual User Definable Reports PPACn CQAn CQACn PQAn PQACn CPBn CPBCn PPBn PPBCn NPBn NPBCn CQBn CQBCn PQBn PQBCn NQBn NQBCn DC ABudget PBudget NBudget CBalance PBalance Previous Year Actual Cumulative for the period specified. Current Year Actual figure for the Quarter specified. Current Year Actual Cumulative for the Quarter specified. Previous Year Actual figure for the Quarter specified. Previous Year Actual Cumulative for the Quarter. Current Year Budget figure for the Period specified. Current Year Cumulative Budget for the Period. Previous Year Budget for the Period specified. Previous Year Cumulative Budget for the Period. Next Year Budget for the Period specified. Next Year Cumulative Budget for the Period specified. Current Year Budget for the Quarter specified. Current Year Cumulative Budget for the Quarter. Previous Year Budget for the Quarter specified. Previous Year Cumulative Budget for the Quarter. Next Year Budget for the Quarter specified. Next Year Cumulative Budget for the Quarter specified. Normal balance type - ie Debit or Credit. When you set up the Nominal. Accounts you specifiy whether the account normally holds a debit or a credit balance. This will print either D or C. Annual Budget figure for the Current Year. Annual Budget figure for the Previous Year. Annual Budget figure for Next Year. Current Actual Balance at todays date. Corresponding Actual balance for last year. This will be the cumulative balance up to and including the current period. Codes which may be used in Trial Balances The following fields may be used within Trial Balance format files. Unlike in the account reports period and quarter numbers are not specified, since a trail balance will always show figures for the period selected when printing the report. Name Sort Div Dep Act CPA CPAC PPA PPAC CQA CQAC PQA PQAC CPB CPBC PPB PPBC NPB NPBC The account name or description The sort code allocated to the account The division - the first part of the nominal account code. The Department - the second part of the nominal account code. The Expense - the last part of the nominal account code. Current Year Period (as opposed to quarter) Actual balance. This will be the period specified when printing the report. Current period Actual cumulative balance for the period. Previous Year Actual figure for the period. Previous Year Actual Cumulative for the period. Current Year Actual figure for the Quarter - this will be the quarter into which the period chosen when the report is printed falls. Current Year Actual Cumulative for the Quarter. Previous Year Actual figure for the Quarter. Previous Year Actual Cumulative for the Quarter. Current Year Budget figure for the Period. Current Year Cumulative Budget for the Period. Previous Year Budget for the Period. Previous Year Cumulative Budget for the Period. Next Year Budget for the Period. Next Year Cumulative Budget for the Period. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 110

115 Nominal Ledger Manual User Definable Reports CQB CQBC PQB PQBC NQB NQBC DC ABudget PBudget NBudget CBalance PBalance Current Year Budget for the Quarter. Current Year Cumulative Budget for the Quarter. Previous Year Budget for the Quarter. Previous Year Cumulative Budget for the Quarter. Next Year Budget for the Quarter. Next Year Cumulative Budget for the Quarter. Normal balance type - ie Debit or Credit. When you set up the Nominal Accounts you specifiy whether the account normally holds a debit or a credit balance. This will print either D or C. Annual Budget figure for the Current Year. Annual Budget figure for the Previous Year. Annual Budget figure for Next Year. Current Actual Balance at todays date. Corresponding Actual balance for last year. This will be the cumulative balance up to and including the current period. Codes which may be used in Transaction Reports The following fields may be used within transaction reports. Note that some of these fields refer to the account and others to the individual transaction. The list below shows them in two groups to make this clearer. In some reports these may be combined into a single line. However, in others you may wish to have a header line for each account followed by a list of transactions. See the examples below. Fields used for account information Name Sort Div Dep Act Adebit TDebit ABalance Acredit TCredit The account name or description The sort code allocated to the account The division - the first part of the nominal account code. The Department - the second part of the nominal account code. The Expense - the last part of the nominal account code. Total debit balance on the Account Total debit balance on all accounts included in the report. The account balance - debits less credits. This only includes transactions included in the report. Total Credit balance on the account Total credit balance on all accounts included in the report. Fields used for transaction information Name TDate Comment Source T Bat Item Tran Debit Credit The account name or description The date of the transaction The comment entered for a transaction Purchase Ledger Invoice. Short codes will be printed. Type i.e. Journal, Accrual or Prepayment. The codes J, A or P will be printed. Entries from other systems, e.g. Bank, Purchase Ledger etc, appear as type J. The number of the batch in which the transaction was originally entered. The item number within the original batch where the transaction was entered. The Transaction number (Note that where entries are made from other sources, eg Bank, Purchase Ledger this is the Nominal transaction number not the original transaction number.) The amount of the transaction - if a debit amount. The amount of the transaction - if a credit amount. Comment [AV2]: Page: 6???list these Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 111

116 Nominal Ledger Manual Imports Fields used in Bank Report Name The account name or description Name The payee on the bank transaction. TDate Transaction date PDate Processing date EDate Entry date Comment Comment on the transaction HP Payment method Bat Batch Batn Batch Item Item Itm Item SPage Statement page number PRef Payment reference ( cheque ) No Transaction number SRef Supplier reference ARef Additional reference from source of postings App Application of originating transaction Tran Transaction NTran Transaction TDebit Total of all debits TCredit Total of all credits Debit Debit amount Credit Credit amount Net Net of total debits/credits Amt The transaction amount Page Statement page number NAmt Nominal analysis amount NSrc Source of nominal analysis NDiv Nominal division code NDep Nominal department NExp Nominal expense code NBatch Original batch number where nominal analysis took place NItem Item number where nominal analysis took place Imports If you are setting up your accounts, and want to make use of data that you already have on another system, you can 'import' this data, using the Nominal Ledger, Imports option. This allows you to import account information, ie names and account codes, transactions and budget information. In each case you will need to provide a format file name, showing what information is to be transferred, and the file name containing the data. You will then be able to view or print the data before importing it. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 112

117 Nominal Ledger Manual Imports Importing NL Accounts To import accounts from an external system to Oasis the file will most commonly be in CSV format as created in Excel and that has corresponding columns to the Format file described below. Use File Save As in Excel and change the File Type to CSV (Comma Separated Variable) using a filename of not more than 8 characers. Sort Dept Exp Name BP CD NP DepName ExpName ADMIN ADM 6001 Gross Salaries - Admin P D ADMIN ADM 6002 Employers NIC - Admin P D ADMIN ADM 6003 Pension Costs - Admin P D You need to specify an import format file indicating what fields of information you will be importing. This file is created using File, Text Editor. The file should be saved using a filename of not more than 8 characters and suffixed with.nlf into the Oasis\Data folder. If you are using 'Internal', the file should consist of a single line containing <Internal>. For any other file format the import format file will consist of field codes separated by commas, similar to the example below: Sort,Dep,Exp,Name,BP,DC,NP,DepName,ExpName, Once the format file is created click on Nominal Ledger, Imports, Import NL Accounts You will first need to specify how the data to be imported is presented, most commonly Comma separated although some system export with Tab separated. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 113

118 Nominal Ledger Manual Imports Facilities exist within the system for producing export data directly from this system, using an 'Internal' format. If you then want to import this same data, you need to specify Internal format. To avoid speech marks being imported and column headings being read as an actual account, ensure both Strip delimiting quote characters and Ignore header record are checked. Click Select import format and select the format file.nlf described at the beginning of this section. Next select the file to be imported Select import data file, you will need to type the name of your file including.csv. To see that the data is going to import correctly click View data. Once you are confident the data will be imported correctly click Import data. Importing Transactions Importing transactions is essentially the same as importing accounts. A format file needs to be created prior to import. Nominal Ledger, Imports, Import Transactions Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 114

119 Nominal Ledger Manual Imports In addition to the same options as with importing account, when you import transactions, you have a choice to Generate new transaction numbers for the imported transactions, or not. If you are 'filling' a new system with transactions from elsewhere, you may want to retain the original transaction numbers. Otherwise, if you are importing transactions generated by some other system, you could require that these transactions are given new numbers. If you have the check in Delete data after import, the import data will be deleted so there is no chance of importing the same file again accidentally. Click Select import format and select the format file.nlf created for transaction and then select the file to be imported Select import data file. To see that the data is going to import correctly click View data. Importing Budget Data When budgets change at the year end, you could decide that, rather than using the budget facilities within the programs, you would prefer to export the budgets, perhaps into a spreadsheet, and then to re-import the data. If you are using a spreadsheet to format your budgets, then you should ensure that the output from the spreadsheet is Saved As a File Type of CSV ( comma delimited) (*.csv) The file produced should contain your account Division, Dept and Expense codes, along with user definable fields to identify which periods you want to import to. Your csv file will normally consist of a header record, containing the column headings, followed by rows containing your data. An example is given below: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 115

120 Nominal Ledger Manual Imports Dep Exp Current CP1 CP2 CP3 CP4 CP5 CP6 CP7 CP8 CP9 CP10 CP11 CP12 B04 B B04 B The available field codes for your column headings are: Div (Division) Dep (Department) Exp (Expense) Current (Current annual budget) Next (Next years annual budget) CP1 (Current period 1 budget) CP2 CP12 (Current periods 2-12 budgets) QP1 QP4 (Current quarter budgets 1 4) NP1-NP12 (Next years period budgets) NQ1-NQ4 (Next years quarter budgets) Once the CSV file has been created click on Nominal Ledger, Imports, Import Budgets: Select Comma separated. Make sure the option to Strip delimiting quote characters and Ignore header record is checked. Unlike with the other imports you do not need a Format file; the fields can be interpreted directly from the CSV. You must first get the program to interpret your columns by clicking on the Select Import format button typing the name of your CSV file. Then click on the Select import data file and again type the name of your CSV file. You can View or Print Data when you have selected your import file to check that it has been read correctly. Accounts with invalid accounts will be shown with a stars. Finally click on Import data when you want to import. Any records with invalid accounts will be ignored. Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 116

121 Nominal Ledger Manual File Health File Health The File Health program is designed to check the integrity of your Nominal data. It is designed to run immediately you select the option, and will bring a report of its findings to screen with an option to print to your default printer or to a PDF file. The options you can use for checking your data are set up in the Nominal Ledger, Options, File Health options: Some of the available options can take some time to run, so, when you start using the File Health program, you should not select all of them. You should always select the NL Entries since transaction as this will not take a long time. In the box to the right of this option, enter your last nominal transaction number. (You can see what this is by using NL Audit, View Nominal Transaction, and click on the Last button at the bottom of the screen). When you start, select just the first option and the NL Entries option. The printout will tell you how long the check took. Subsequently, you can try the other options, each time noting how long the process takes. When you are starting to use your Nominal Ledger, it will not take long to run through all of the checks, but will obviously take longer as the files get larger. NL Transaction data check This option will cause the program to scan through your transaction data, reading each transaction. It will do this seven times, and will print details at the end. It will show the expected number of transactions and compare this with the actual number. If these figures are different, you probably have a file corruption and will need to rebuild your data file. Consult your Systems Manager if this occurs. The results of this check look like: NL Transaction File Entries =========================== Data records Indexes: Div Dept Expense Sort Trans Date Number Batch Entry Date Expected: Counted: Beaver Software Systems Ltd Page 117