© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. Presented by: Sherri Brenizer Assistant Director: Student Financial Services Graceland University May 28 to 31, 2014 – Washington,

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc.

Presented by: Sherri BrenizerAssistant Director: Student Financial ServicesGraceland UniversityMay 28 to 31, 2014 – Washington, DC

Can ascii post really simplify my life?

Session 129


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


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: 10- -1210 10-15600-6000

About Graceland’s Account numbers


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?


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 email?

Why re-invent the wheel?


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?


Create the file

Save the file

Check the file

Post the file

So what are the steps for this process?


HD: author, User ID, post date, station, fiscal month, journal code, doc codeHow 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


GE: Doc ID, doc code, doc num, "comment", entry, Form of Payment, Pay numberHow this looks:GE: 000000,JE,20140531,“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)


GT: amount, fund, func, obj, subfund, How this looksGT: 107.90,10,15600,6199,, GT: -107.90,10,16600,6199,,

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)


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?


SE: subs, subs num, doc id, doc code, doc num, "comment", entryHow this looks:SE: S/A,255671,255671,AR,05312014,“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)


ST: tot, tot period, bal, bal period, amount, assoc amountHow 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)


TR:

Every posting file ends with a trailer line.

It literally is just a TR and nothing else.

Nuts and Bolts: Trailer Row (TR)


How does this look all put together?

Example of our Benefit Allocation posting.


A more complicated example:HD budgets 4/17/2014 BAL BG

#=====10-16309==GIS Services==========================================

GE 0 BA 0 GIS Services BGTR

GT 187 10 16309 6453

GT -3 10 16309 6199

GT -100 10 16309 6220

GT 58157 10 16309 6254

GT -58241 10 16100 6999

#=====10-16300==Exec. Director of IT==================================

GE 0 BA 0 Exec. Director of IT BGTR

GT 405 10 16300 6050

GT 753 10 16300 6210

GT -1158 10 16100 6999

#=====10-16302==Computer Labs=========================================

GE 0 BA 0 Computer Labs BGTR

GT -62231 10 16302 6900

GT -11 10 16302 6340

GT 62242 10 16302 6475

#=====10-16306==Communictn Tech - Dept================================

GE 0 BA 0 Communictn Tech - Dept BGTR

GT 630 10 16306 6475

GT -630 10 16100 6999


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


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 email 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.


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 email to us with all of the posting problems. We can then go fix the issues and post the file painlessly.

Check file


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


YESSooooo… Can ASCII post really simplify my life?

Documents

© 2014 Jenzabar, Inc. Presented by: Sherri Brenizer Assistant Director: Student Financial Services Graceland University May 28 to 31, 2014 – Washington,