Periods, Balances And Groups
There are several ways in which account information may be made to appear on a report. An account may be requested by making direct reference to its code, or a more general reference may be made to its group. Its group must have been previously defined in the Financial Formula Table.
A request for account code information must also be qualified by further codes that tell CAPITAL exactly what piece of information is to be retrieved. The easiest way to explain how this works is to step through a series of examples. This is one of the most straightforward requests that can be made:
The code period_amt instructs CAPITAL to look-up the current period activity for the chart of accounts code 10000 and place this amount in the report. The next code instructs CAPITAL to look-up and report the current year-to-date balance for account 30000:
Note that there must be a colon (:) dividing the qualifier from the account code reference.
The next code instructs CAPITAL to look-up and report the last year balance for the same period last year for account code 30000:
See the following table, which lists the qualifiers that may be used in financial reports:
|
Account Qualifier Codes | ||
|
Code |
Abbreviation |
Description |
|
name: |
|
The name/description of the account. |
|
code: |
|
The account code. |
|
period_amt: |
>>PA |
Period activity. |
|
period_bal: |
>>PB |
Period balance up to current period. |
|
Quarter_amt: |
>>QA |
Quarterly activity for the quarter that the financial report is reporting on. |
|
Quarter_bal: |
>>QB |
Quarterly balance up to the current quarter, based on the period of the report. |
|
Half_amt: |
>>HA |
Half yearly activity for the half year that the financial report is reporting on. |
|
Half_bal: |
>>HB |
Half yearly balance up to the half year that the financial report is reporting on. |
|
last_amt: |
>>LA |
Period activity for same time last year. |
|
last_bal: |
>>LB |
Period balance for same time last year. |
|
budget_amt: |
>>BA |
Budget amount for current period. |
|
budget_bal: |
>>BB |
Budget balance up to current period. |
Period Qualifiers
Consider this extract from a report:
The first line prints the name/description of account code '10000'. Let's say that this is your 'sales' account. The next line is blank, so CAPITAL skips this line on the report as well. The line following that has the qualifier period_amt, so the period activity (sales for the month) is printed here.
Note the double slashes "//" that appear at the right-hand side of the report. The two slashes inform CAPITAL to ignore everything at this point and beyond as they are user remarks only.
The instruction [period_bal:10000] informs CAPITAL to look-up and print the period balance (the total year to date sales) of the account. The amount that is printed here is determined by the current period. Remember that users are prompted to specify the current period before financial statement printing begins. Likewise, the instruction [budget_amt:10000] would request CAPITAL to look-up the budget for the current period.
Reporting need not be restricted to the current period. Consider these instructions:
The second instruction will print the period activity (sales for the month) for the current period minus 1. In other words, the current period's sales is compared to last month's sales.
You are also permitted to specify a specific accounting period if you wish. Consider:
In the above example, sales for period 1, 2 and 3 are printed alongside each other.
Making direct references to account codes can be inflexible, not to mention time consuming. Fortunately, a way is provided to refer to groups rather than individual codes.
Quarterly & Half Yearly Qualifers
The quarterly qualifier is available for general ledgers that have 12 or 13 financial periods. If the general ledger has a different number of periods, then quarterly qualifiers cannot be used and they will alway return a zero value.
The above will return the quarterly activity for account code 10000. For example, if the financial report is being run for August and August is in the first quarter, and the first quarter starts in July, then the total activity for the periods July, August and September will be returned. If the financial report is being run for March, and July is the first accounting period, then the total account activity for the 3rd quarter (January, February and March) will be returned.
The above will return the balance for all quarters up to the current quarter. For example, if the financial report is being run for March, and July is the first accounting period, then the total account balance for the first, second and third quarters will be included in the report. This is because March appears, in this case, in the 3rd quarter.
You may also specify the particular quarter you wish to report on by including the quarter's number as part of the qualifier.
The above will report on the balance of the account as per the end of the second quarter. Only the numbers 1-4 are valid for quarterly reporting.
If
the general ledger has 13 accounting periods, period 13 is always included in the last quarter.
The above will return the half yearly activity for account code 10000. If the financial report is run in the first half of the year, then this will be the total of all activity for the first half of the number of periods in the general ledger. If the financial report is run in the second half of the year, this will be the total of all activity for the second half of the number of periods in the general ledger.
The above will return the half yearly balance for account code 10000. If the financial report is run in the first half of the year, then this will be the balance for the first half of the number of periods in the general ledger. For example, if the first accounting period is July and there are 12 periods in the general ledger, then the balance of the account as of December will be included in the report. (Six periods.)
You may also specify the particular half year you wish to report on by including the half year's number as part of the qualifier.
The above will report on the balance of the account as per the end of the second half of the year. Only the numbers 1-2 are valid for half yearly reporting.
If
the financial report is run in the second half of the year, this will be the balance of the account as
per the last period in the general ledger.
If
there are an uneven number of posting periods in the general ledger, the 'odd' posting period will always
be included in the second half of the financial year's counting.
A group is identified by placing a @ or a # symbol in front of the group code. The @ symbol literally means, 'give me the total of'. The # symbol literally means, 'give me the next in the list of'. Once again, examples will help clarify how this works. Imagine you have defined a group of sales accounts and have specified them in the financial formula table. The name of this group is 'Sales'.
Examine the following instructions:
The first instruction will print the total sales for the period for the entire group 'sales'. The next instruction will print the total sales for the year up to and including the current period, for the group.
A short-hand way of printing all sales accounts on a report is to specify the group with the # (hash) symbol. For example, the following instruction will print sales for the month for each period in the 'sales' group:
[period_amt:#sales]
Consider the result when the two are combined:
The above might print (depending on the lay-out instructions of the report and the data in your master file) something that would look like this:
Where
possible, refer to groups instead of account codes in your reports. Since account codes are often added
or deleted, such changes can invalidate your financial statements. Consider the two most likely scenarios:
1. New account codes have been added. Since your financial statements were not updated, the reports may fail to take into account the new balances.
2. The account codes did at one point exist, but have since been deleted. Your financial statements may report errors when trying to 'request' information for non-existent accounts.
Provided the financial formula table is updated and correct, reports that make reference mainly to groups are less likely to require maintenance. Points 1 and 2 should then not be an issue.
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