© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. Presented by: Sherri Brenizer Assistant Director: Student Financial Services Graceland University May 28 to 31, 2014 – Washington, DC Can ascii post really simplify my life? Session 129

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  IT liaison for Graceland’s Accounting Services department for 13 ½ years  Currently Assistant Director of newly created Student Financial Services department.  Helped our IT staff develop this posting process that has saved many hours for our staff. About me

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  We have a 2 character fund  We have a 5 character function (and blank is valid)  We have a 4 character object  We do not use subfund  Some example account numbers:   About Graceland’s Account numbers

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  A CX STANDARD way to load transactions from outside sources into CX  ASCII = a plain text file  CSV (comma delimited file) So what exactly is an ASCII Transaction Post File?

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  CX already has options for posting general ledger transactions and even recurring transactions into the system.  You can also post transactions to sub-ledgers in CX…if you have a bottle of Advil sitting next to you.  So what if you want to post a large number of transactions from a system outside of CX (homegrown or other)?  What if you want to check the file before you post it to make sure there are no errors?  What about transactions from departments asking to add charges to student’s accounts using ? Why re-invent the wheel?

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  Transactions from our Facility Services homegrown system directly into the general ledger  Budget revision transactions  Budgets  Benefit allocation entries  Bal Forward and Bal Closing entries (yes, it’s that time of year)  Recurring bank statement entries  Charges to student’s accounts  Charges from our Follett bookstore  Month end balancing entries  The list goes on and on What types of transactions/files do we post?

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  Create the file  Save the file  Check the file  Post the file So what are the steps for this process?

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. HD: author, User ID, post date, station, fiscal month, journal code, doc code How this looks: HD: JEPOST,,05/31/2017,,MAY,JC  Author: Name of process that produces the file. This is not loaded into the database.  User Id number: We’ve always left this blank. I think it’s not loaded into the database  Post date: MM/DD/YYYY format. CX standard process ignores this field.  Station Number: posted files don’t go through a station so this is typically left blank  Fiscal month. CX standard process ignores this field.  Journal Code: AC, AP, AR, SA, CH, QC, DA, PD, FA, JC, CK, BG, PC, PR, PS, SB.  Document code. We’ve always left this blank (the doc code is on the GE lines below). Nuts and Bolts:Format Header Row

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. GE: Doc ID, doc code, doc num, "comment", entry, Form of Payment, Pay number How this looks: GE: ,JE, ,“Benefit Allocation",ACCT  Document id: If there is a 1 to 1 relationship between the GE and a single ID, this should be the ID number to make certain CX reports show the subsidiary info. Otherwise, 0.  Document Table Code: Must be an active doc from doc_table.  Document Number: an integer. Often made up (like the date in yyyymmdd format) or the serial key from a driving table. The most desirable is to increment last_issued_num from doc_table and use that number, but that’s very difficult to build into a file.  Entry Description: 24 character description. The only description in files without subsidiaries. The comment is for the batch of transactions and not a single transaction. It should have quotes around it but should not contain any quotes.  Entry Type: XTND, BOOK, etc. Must be an active ent in ent_table.  Form of Payment. We have never used this because we load charges not payments. But this would be any valid form of payment like CK (check).  Form of Payment number (check number). We’ve never used this because we load charges not payments. But this would be the form of payment number (like check number). Nuts and Bolts: General Ledger Entry Row (GE)

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. GT: amount, fund, func, obj, subfund, How this looks GT: ,10,15600,6199,, GT: ,10,16600,6199,,  Amount: the amount of the charge or the credit.  The amount cannot have dollar signs or commas. Parenthesis cannot be used to indicate negative amounts. A negative must be represented by the minus sign.  Fund  Func  Obj  Subfund Nuts and Bolts: General Ledger Transaction Row (GT)

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  Same thing, more fields  Now we have to include additional fields like Doc id, Tot Code, Tot period, etc.  No problem once you get your template setup. What about posting to a subsidiary ledger?

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. SE: subs, subs num, doc id, doc code, doc num, "comment", entry How this looks: SE: S/A,255671,255671,AR, ,“DISCIPLINARY FINE",ENT  Subs Code: S/A, etc. Must match the account number in the GT account record for the transaction as defined in subs_table.  Subs Number: student’s id number  Doc ID: student’s id number  Doc Code: same as the doc code on the GE line. This may not be required but it has been in all the files I’ve made.  Doc Number: an integer. See the note on GE doc number  Description: 24 character description. It should have quotes around it and should not contain quotes.  Entry Type: Must be valid code. Same as the entry type on the GE line. This may not be required but we use it. Nuts and Bolts: Subsidiary Ledger Entry Row (SE)

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. ST: tot, tot period, bal, bal period, amount, assoc amount How this looks: ST: MISC,SP14,SB,SP14,200.00,0  Note: Some subsidiaries require tot codes, some do not. For those that do not have tots, the tot code and bal code must be spaces (surrounded by quotes) and the periods are left blank: ST: " ",," ",,100.00,0  Tot Code: Must be an active tot_code from subt_table (if required).  Tot Period: 2 character Session + 2 char year (SP14) for students, calendar year (CY14) for wages.  Bal Code: This code is “SB” or blank  Bal Period: The bal period is “INV” for accounts payable, it is the same as the tot period for student accounts (“SP14”), and is the combination of payroll code and payroll number (“MON100”) for wages payable.  Subsidiary Amount: amount of individual line  Subsidiary Associated Amount: Typically zero. In payroll, amount deduction is based on. Nuts and Bolts: Subsidiary Ledger Transaction Row (ST)

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  TR:  Every posting file ends with a trailer line.  It literally is just a TR and nothing else. Nuts and Bolts: Trailer Row (TR)

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. How does this look all put together?  Example of our Benefit Allocation posting.

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. A more complicated example: HDbudgets4/17/2014BALBG #===== ==GIS Services========================================== GE0BA0GIS ServicesBGTR GT GT GT GT GT #===== ==Exec. Director of IT================================== GE0BA0Exec. Director of ITBGTR GT GT GT #===== ==Computer Labs========================================= GE0BA0Computer LabsBGTR GT GT GT #===== ==Communictn Tech - Dept================================ GE0BA0Communictn Tech - DeptBGTR GT GT

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  Saving the file  Now the file is created so we need to save it. You will need to save the file as a.csv file in your home directory.  Posting the file  There are two ways you can post the file  1) In Menu: [c] Fiscal Management [a] Accounting [c] Journal Processing Menu [i] ASCII Posting Menu [a] Post ASCII Files to G/L  2) At Unix command line: cd ascii ($CARSPATH//vchpost/Filepost/ascii) filepost -n filename -m a -d 05/31/2014 -p MAY Save and post the file

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. What about charges to Student Accounts from departments that I mentioned in the beginning?  We have a spreadsheet formatted in the order that we need it with name, id, amount, budget numbers, etc  The departments will fill out the spreadsheet with the information in this format (yeah right)!  They the spreadsheet to us, we then add the header and GE, GT and TR information to the spreadsheet and are ready to save and post.  This process saves us hours of keying individual entries into CX AR journal entry screens.

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  I also mentioned in a previous slide that part of our process is to check the file.  What if you have a huge file of entries and you try to post them and the posting fails because of a terminated account. You then fix the account and post again only to find an account that is not opened.  This could go on and on for days…get the Advil back out.  Fortunately our IT staff has developed a process that we can run prior to posting of a file that goes out and reads the file and returns an to us with all of the posting problems. We can then go fix the issues and post the file painlessly. Check file

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  Set up a template for GL postings, GL to SUBS postings and SUBS to SUBS postings (yes this can be done too).  Create the file  Save the file as CSV  Check the file  Post the file Recap

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.  YES Sooooo… Can ASCII post really simplify my life?