Nominal Ledger - Financials - In Depth

The de Facto S5 Nominal Ledger accounts software module is fully integrated into the Purchase and Sales Ledgers and the Banking module, all of which are completely integrated into the Logistics Suite and Production and Costing modules.

The Nominal Ledger module provides key features from the Financial Suite, such as multi company consolidation, Multi-currency and proper Open Period Accounting. The Suite also benefits from all of the System-wide features, such as easy Data Importing, Email and Fax Integration.

The de Facto S5 Nominal Ledger is built around a highly flexible multi-dimensional accounts structure. This is founded on a free format chart of accounts, which can be linked to multiple, multi-level analysis structures. This concept can then be mirrored for a cost centre based axis.

This flexibility allows any number of financial statements to be based around a single chart of accounts, when combined with the multi-level analysis structures. This flexibility is often used for producing statutory, management and perhaps US style group format reports, all directly from the same chart of accounts, without the need to compromise any of the formats or to resort to spreadsheets.

Given the importance of, and particular needs of report writing for financial statements, de Facto S5 provides a dedicated reporting tool especially designed for this task. This allows sophisticated multi-column reports to be easily built using the powerful analysis structures. The report writer includes a multitude of calculation facilities, such as balance sensitive account location within reports, key ratio facilities, variance calculations, etc.

Financial reports are also able to refer to constant values, which can be held at company, account and cost centre level. These can then be used in calculated columns, for showing or apportioning overheads based on occupancy size, etc.

A series of facilities provide for the flexible, intelligent formatting of reports without the need for spreadsheets. Reports can be previewed on screen and such things as consolidation roll ups can therefore be modified prior to printing.

de Facto S5 offers easy navigation around the system, and you can quickly move all the way from nominal ledger account balance to originating transactions to such things as sales orders, and purchase invoices. Equally important is the ability to view the postings made from any transaction, and to be able to quickly and easily reproduce relevant documents such as invoices.

Along with multi-company facilities, de Facto S5 also enables Nominal Ledger consolidation for multiple companies. The consolidation option can be automated if all the companies operate on servers based on the same local area network.

Alternatively if companies operate on discrete remote networks, then 'consolidation files' can be extracted and emailed to head office for consolidation. An additional facility is also offered for the inclusion of consolidation data from third party financial applications. A correctly formatted file simply has to be extracted from the relevant nominal ledger for inclusion in the overall consolidation.

The consolidation option further provides the ability to create elimination journals within the consolidation company.

The nominal ledger allows multiple budgets to be created in any currency, and also for quantity data, if required. Data can be spread and flexed within a budget; new forecasts can be based on existing data where needed. In addition, budget data can also be imported from spreadsheets.

Furthermore, budget data can be used for verification purposes via the Purchase Order Processing module, whereby order values can be verified against available budget.

de Facto S5 also has a facility to allow budgets to be locked to prevent changes from being made, whether accidental or otherwise. If required, budget transfer journals can also be made to provide an auditable history of the changes made to the budgets.

The de Facto Sales and Purchase Order Processing modules have the option of creating and maintaining commitments against nominal ledger accounts and cost centres. This data is then available for reporting within the financial statement reporting facility. The commitments are also maintained in parallel with those held on the Job Costing when this module is used.

This offers de Facto S5 users who work with what may be termed bulk products, the option of collating such things as tonnage, volume or quantities in the Nominal Ledger. This feature allows the reporting of sales in tonnes, average price per M3, or number of cases held in stock, for example. Budget and comparative data can also be held in quantities.

The de Facto Nominal Ledger provides full reconciliation facilities on all accounts. The feature provides a variety of functions, such as the ability to search on any transaction field including values. Un-reconciled entries can be added to a notepad option so as to allow complete reconciliation print-outs to be made. These un-reconciled entries can then be matched off during subsequent reconciliations.

The nominal ledger provides all the facilities for Journal entries you'd expect, including recurring, reversing and template journals. In common with all financial suite transactions, journals can use quantities in their entries. VAT entries are also catered for directly from journals as either 'net + VAT', or 'gross - VAT'. VAT inputs and outputs are also definable.

de Facto S5 handles Nominal Ledger receipts and payments, and these are fully integrated into the banking module. The module provides cheque printing as well as BACS or online banking integration.

Fast entry options are available for all types of transactions; these allow the required fields to be specified by user and transaction type. These facilities are designed to speed up repetitive data entry tasks.

A further useful option shared by all de Facto S5 transaction types is the ability to have both internal and external references, as well as a unique system number for all transactions. Descriptions and notes facilities are available at both header and detail level on all transactions. Additionally, user entered reference and description data can easily be corrected after posting.

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Journals

de Facto S5 Journals allow unlimited lines of entry, use of quantities and VAT handling. They further provide the ability to link to customers and suppliers accounts, as well as to post to job costing when appropriately configured.

The chart of accounts and the account maintenance window allow full control over the usage of accounts. For instance, an account can be restricted to only allow postings from the purchase ledger, or to only allow posting of journals, or, as may be required for control accounts, to not allow any user-driven posting at all.

An additional control is available to specify the cost centre handling for the particular account. The cost centre can be specified as 'not required', 'optional', 'fixed' or 'compulsory' from a choice list. In a similar manner, accounts can be specified as requiring Job Costing postings.

Subsidiary Ledger Journals are now all accessible directly within the Nominal Ledger as well as from the originating transactions, without the need to drill down unless required.

Each of the categories listed below will have multiple versions exploiting the many options that the standard reports provide.

In addition to Nominal Ledger specific reports, de Facto S5 provides a comprehensive series of Standard Reports, many of which can be easily parameter driven by the user. S5 further provides the Vistas feature, which are a powerful and easy way of selecting, sorting, displaying and working with data from either single or multiple tables.