Creating New Data With CAPITAL Office

If it is not practical for you to use the sample chart provided, because the structure of the chart differ substantially from the way in which you wish to set-up your general ledger, or, the expense coding you already use with CAPITAL Office is not compatible with the sample data, read this section.

Firstly, you will need to create a set of empty general ledger data files in the same subdirectory as your existing CAPITAL Office data. For example, if you are running a company called "Acme" under CAPITAL Office, you will need to create a set of company files in the general ledger for "Acme".

Choose Files|Create Company Wizard from the menu options.

Select Create from scratch and click on Next. A second screen will appear.

Enter Company Name

Enter a short alpha-numeric code up to 8 characters in length that will serve as an identification code for this company. This should be the name of an existing CAPITAL Office company that you wish to create general ledger files for.

For Financial Year

Enter the starting year for your company data. For example, if you wish to create a set of files for the financial year 1996/97, enter 96 here.

CAPITAL GL Controller will spend a short while creating a new set of files. After this is completed, you will be prompted for the following information:

Start Date Of Financial Year

Enter the financial year starting date. This might be January 1st, 1997 for example, if you wish to base your financial year on the calendar year. The 1st of July 1996 or 97 would be more appropriate if you wished to work with a standard Australian financial year. CAPITAL GL Controller assumes that you want a standard financial year and provides a default date such as 01/07/96 (depending on the year you enter when you first start this program).

Number Of Accounting Periods

 Most companies will run either a 12 period or 13 period financial year. Enter the appropriate number.

Next General Journal Number

This is the next general ledger batch number to be issued when creating journals. This starts at 1 and normally does not need to be changed. You may wish to change it, however, if you are moving across from another program or a manual system and want this number to correspond to the next unused batch to be entered. You can easily change this number at a later date if you need to.

Next Standing Journal Number

The next standing journal or accruals batch number to use. These numbers start with "st" to differentiate them from regular batch numbers. When a standing journal is copied to general journals for posting, the newly created batch will be issued the next available general journal batch number anyway. The "st" numbers are not normally posted to your general ledger audit trail.

Click Ok if you are happy with the starting and ending dates of each period, otherwise click on the first month to change. It will appear at the bottom. Click on the "from date" and change. Then click on the "to date" and change.

Select the next month and follow the above procedure until all is complete. You may also click on the period name and change it if you wish. In most cases changes to this table will be unnecessary. In some cases you will need to make changes. For example, if you have specified thirteen accounting periods, or if you wish to start at the calendar year rather than the financial year.

Several rules apply when doing changes to the period range table. The number of periods specified must add up to an entire year and there can be no date gaps between periods. That is, every date for the year must be covered by one and only one of the periods you specify.

Once you have finished with this table CAPITAL will spend a few moments updating data files.

Transferring Expense Codes

If you are running CAPITAL Office and wish to transfer your original expense codes over to the general ledger read this section.

You will now need to transfer your existing expense account codes into the chart of accounts. From the main menu choose Maintenance|General Ledger Setup|Transfer Expenses. You will be prompted for the following information:

From Account Code

To Account Code

Leave both fields blank and click on Ok.

All your expense codes will be transferred to your chart of accounts. They will be entered as posting, profit and loss, debit type accounts in the chart. You will now need to add your income, purchasing, cost of sales or opening and closing stock accounts and your balance sheet account codes to complete the chart.

Once the basic chart of accounts has been entered, your next task will be to create a financial formulas table, then create the necessary financial statements to match the chart. In most cases the Quick Report Writer can do most of the work involved in creating these reports.

You should now begin by reading Connecting to CAPITAL Office for a thorough discussion of the issues involved in interfacing CAPITAL Office to CAPITAL GL Controller.