General Ledger

ALERE General Ledger Module

The General Ledger Module is responsible for maintaining the chart of accounts, the fiscal year rules, and the financial and analysis reports for your company. Key Features:

Chart of accounts are created and maintained using Treevision. This provides you with an Explorer-like graphical interface that makes it easy to navigate and maintain the chart of accounts.

Drill down on the chart of accounts allows you to:

Find account balances.
List the journal entries for a specific account and date range.
Select an entry and go to the actual journal entry.
Instantly reverse and/or duplicate the entry.

Alphanumeric chart of accounts.

Account numbers are up to 24 characters wide with up to six user defined segments.

A fiscal year may have up to 99 periods.

You can set the start day and month of each period, thus you can control the day each period ends. For example, each period could be set to end on a Saturday.

The number of days a prior period will accept journal entries before requiring a password can be set from 0 to 999.

The number of periods in the future that will accept journal entries can be set form 0 to 99.

ALERE is a real-time system which means that GL transactions from anywhere in the program are instantly posted to the general ledger. This permits:

Periods to be automatically closed which eliminates the necessity to make period closing entries and release batch postings before you are able to operate in the next period.
Critical reports, like Balance Sheets and Income Statements, to always be available and up to date.
Drill down to the actual journal entry at any time.
Better data integrity because large, complex batch postings which tax networks are avoided.

A Period/Year Closing screen summarizes that status of each period and year. You can tell at a glance:

Which key financial reports have not been printed by period or year.
Which reports need to be reprinted due to prior period or year postings.
Which periods or years have been closed.

Default General Ledger accounts are maintained on one single screen which greatly simplifies the management of these accounts.

Custom General Ledger accounts may be established for any combination of:

Any customer, sales group or individual customer.
Any location.
Any item, item group, or individual item.

These rules help define which accounts are to be used when the custom accounts are involved. For example, you may wish to post all sales from a specific customer to a special revenue account.

Custom general ledger account rules can be tested on a special Inquiry Tab.

Templates allow pre-defined methods of distributing amounts to accounts during GL journal entries. The methods are as follows:

As percents of the amount entered.
As fixed amounts.
As distributions to inventory adjustments.
As supplier purchases distributions.

Distribution templates that use percentages only require a single amount to be entered for the entire journal entry to be created.

Value based recurring entries allow zero (0) amounts to be assigned to the distribution account numbers and the entry can be saved unbalanced. This allows you to set up a template that only loads accounts to which you apply amounts.

GL journal entry is completely accomplished on one screen.

The journal entry screen has forward and backward buttons that allow you to page through all transactions made from anywhere within the system.

A Get button helps you find specific entries based on the journal ID, a reference key or the description of the entry.

A Search button permits you to set conditions that will then be used to filter the list of journal entries for only those that meet the search criteria. For example, creating a list of all transactions that paid a utility company.

Journal entries are aided by buttons that automatically do the following:

Force balanced entries.
Auto reverse the positions of debits and credits.
Copy or reverse entries.
Load predefined account distribution templates.
Insert new transaction lines.
Delete existing transaction lines.

Postings to any prior period within the current year are allowable.

Prior period postings can be password protected.

Recurring journal entries are supported and can be set up with fixed, variable or percentage distributions. A "Due Date" button easily lists all entries to be mass released.

Auto reversing transactions allow the user to select the date/period that the reversing entry will occur.

Reversing entries are controlled manually and the postings can be edited before they are released.

Financial information can be exported to F9.

Any number of companies can be merged to create a consolidated Income Statement and Balance Sheets.

Income Statements and Balance Sheets have the following key features:

They can be printed for any period/year or for any date range.
Can be run for up-to-the-minute reporting since all GL posting are in real-time.
Can include the account numbers right on the report.
Run for full accounts, categories, subcategories, and summarized at the account major level.
Any period/year can be compared to any other period year.