Systems Journal Batches

If you do not own or use the CAPITAL Office program then no understanding of "systems" journal batches is required in order to use the general ledger.

There are three ways in which systems journal batches are created:

1. When CAPITAL Office is integrated with CAPITAL GL Controller, and CAPITAL Office has been instructed to create/update journal batches automatically.

2. When the make new system batches utility is used to generate them.

3. When the End Period Wizard creates a system batch.

See: Concepts for advice on the best approach. If method 1 is activated then CAPITAL Office will:

1. Determine if a transaction effects an asset, liability, income or expense account. If this is not the case there is no need to notify the general ledger. For example, raising an invoice will typically effect sales, debtors, inventory and cost of sales accounts. Raising a purchase order, on the other hand, will have no effect as no exchange has yet occurred. This would not be the case if a purchase order was taken delivery of, in which case inventory, creditors, purchases, and possibly various expense accounts, could be effected.

2. If a transaction that is relevant to the general ledger occurs, CAPITAL Office will examine the date of the transaction. If the date is within the period of an existing systems batch, the necessary journals are added to the end of that batch. If the date of the transaction does not fit into any existing batch, a new batch is created to encompass it.

In method 2, various batch details are entered manually, such as the name of the batch, its number, the period to allot it to, etc. The journals within the batch are then generated based on the transactions in CAPITAL Office that lie between a user specified date range. In this case, a systems batch is created after transactions have been entered in CAPITAL Office, not during.

Systems batches may be inspected, reported on and posted. The journals within them cannot be edited, deleted, added to or re-totalled. If a systems batch has to be edited, it must first be converted into a "normal" general journals batch. This can be done using the batch copy command.

Copying Systems Batches

To use the copy command, click copy while in Systems Journal Batches, to move batches from the "systems" area to the "general" batches area. You may either copy the currently highlighted batch or all marked batches.

Once a systems batch is copied into the general area it is removed from the systems area. In this case the "copy" command "transfers" the batch. Under normal circumstances it should not be necessary to transfer systems batches to general journals. It may prove useful if a systems batch is damaged by a hardware malfunction and no longer balances. This problem can also be dealt with by using the Fix Systems Batch Utility. Another circumstance in which it may be necessary, is if an account code has been changed or superseded and invalid account codes need to be updated before posting will be allowed.

Remember: System batches are created by accessing CAPITAL Office transaction data. You cannot add them directly through CAPITAL GL Controller.