(Re)Constructing The Financial Edge: Design and Re-Implementation

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(Re)Constructing The Financial Edge: Design and Re-implementation

PRESENTED BY JONATHAN HOWELL

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• Describe the components of the chart of accounts in Financial Edge

• Differentiate between account elements and transaction characteristics

• Determine how the reporting options in Financial Edge impact your business

• Decide whether changes are necessary for your organization

AFTER THIS SESSION, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO:

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DR $500

Account

Project

Transaction Code 1

Transaction Code 2

THE TRANSACTIONS ARE THE KEY!

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• Every transaction will be associated with an account

• Accounts are made up of segments

• An account may look like this: 01-5200-03

• Fund and Account Code are required

• Up to 8 additional segments, up to 30 characters total

THE ACCOUNT

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• You may call it the “natural account”

• It tells us the type of accounting activity that is occurring

• 01-5200-03

• Sequential account code ranges must be configured in FE to indicate

“Account Category”, eg, Asset, Liability, Revenue, Expense, etc.

• Make sure that it’s consistent!!!

WHAT’S AN “ACCOUNT CODE”?

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• 01-5200-03

• Self-balancing set of accounts

• May represent FAS117 classifications, but doesn’t have to

• Determines how the other characteristics behave

WHAT’S A “FUND”?

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• 01-5200-03

• You can have up to eight

• Generally, they should represent aspects of your business that are

relatively permanent, and apply to a large percentage of transactions

• You can always create more segments, or lengthen existing

segments, but you cannot remove or contract

• Examples are segments that represent departments, cost centers,

locations

WHAT’S AN “OPTIONAL SEGMENT”?

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BUT, THE ACCOUNT STRUCTURE ISN’T THE ONLY

THING THAT MATTERS!

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• A Transaction Characteristic is a data element or code that is used to

further categorize or classify transactions, most often for filtering, roll-

up, and reporting purposes.

• There are four different transaction characteristics: Class, Project,

Transaction Code, and Grant

• Though each is designed with a purpose in mind, you have flexibility in

utilizing each of them

• They are totally separate from the account structure

• They exist to further define the debits and credits that we enter

WHAT’S A “TRANSACTION

CHARACTERISTIC”?

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• Simple drop-down menu

• Truly defines FAS117 activity in Financial Edge

WHAT’S “CLASS”?

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• It’s a database record that offers another layer of detail for

transactions, apart from the account

• It can be used to ‘carve out’ your GL into separate sub-entities for

easy tracking and reporting without having to create a long,

complicated account string or a highly extrapolated chart of accounts

• For example:

- Without Projects

• 01-4001-03-001 – Flood Relief

• 01-4001-03-002 – Hurricane Relief

• 01-4001-03-003 – Water to Haiti

• 01-4001-03-004 – After-School Care

- With Projects

• 01-4001-03 – Disaster Relief

– FL = Flood Relief

– HU= Hurricane Relief

– Haiti = Water to Haiti

– 274-ASC = After-School Care

WHAT’S A “PROJECT”?

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• User-defined drop-down table

• You can use up to five separate tables

• Each table operates independently of the other tables, the projects,

and the accounts

• Example:

- Without T-codes

• 01-4200-03-2-717-49 (Operating Fund, Ticket Sales Revenue,

Productions Department, Summer Series, Cats Production, Civic Center)

- With T-codes (and Projects)

• 01-4200-03

• Summer Series (Project)

• Cats Production (T-Code 1)

• Civic Center (T-Code 2)

• If you use Advanced Budget Management, you can budget by every T-

Code; if not, you can only budget by one, and that’s only if…

WHAT’S A “TRANSACTION CODE”?

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• Generally represent Grants coming into your organization, but you’ve

got some flexibility

• Grant records are linked to transaction code table entries

• Using this functionality allows you to budget by those t-code table

entries

…YOU USE THE “GRANT” RECORD

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WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO YOU?

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• Fund settings can be changed…*explosion sound*

• Account Codes can be re-numbered!

• Everything except account code can be alpha-numeric

• Projects, t-codes, and grants can be renamed at will, without changing

the balance in the record itself

• Projects generally represent where money will be spent once you’ve

secured it

• At least one Transaction Code is often used to denote “Funding

Source”; that is, the activity/solicitation/grant that secured the money

in the first place

• Reports run quickest when built around accounts, slower when built

around projects, and slowest when built around transaction codes

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO YOU?

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• While you have a lot of options with Financial Edge, there are some

general best practices

• Your chart of accounts and characteristics can always expand in the

future; it’s more difficult to contract them

• If you need to contract your chart of accounts, Blackbaud can help you

perform a re-implementation

SUMMARY

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TWEET ABOUT YOUR SESSION

#FERESTRUCTURE #FINANCE