Automatic distributions

Prepaid expenses, depreciation, and accrued liabilities are frequently distributed to cost centers on a monthly basis, so profitability can be measured on a departmental basis. If you have accounts containing balances that are regularly allocated to departments or subaccounts, you can set up a master account that the invoice is charged to. This account would be washed by reverse or offset entries to other accounts automatically in GL Auto Distribution Setup. You can perform allocations based on specific percentages before you produce profit analysis reports and financial statements.

If you choose to reverse amounts in the master account, the balance is allocated by the system to the account codes specified within the set. Depending on the normal balance type of the master account code, the amount that is distributed to the accounts in the set will equal 100% of the amount reversed from the master account.

If you choose to offset transactions, the balance in the master account code is used by the system as the basis to distribute amounts and remains intact. The system debits or credits each specified account a percentage of the amount in the master account. For example, if you are accumulating a reserve for bad accounts, you might debit an expense account for a percentage of the AR Control account and credit a reserve for bad debts account.

After you set up the automatic distributions, verify their accuracy in GL Distribution Master List Report and make any necessary corrections before you generate transactions.

The actual distribution occurs when you run GL Entry Distribute Automatically Report. This function opens a journal, adjusts the account code period balances, and creates the distribution transactions.

GL Entry Distribute Automatically Report stops processing and prints an error message if the proof fields do not match for an offsetting distribution, if they do not equal 100% for a reversal distribution, or if there is an error in any part of the distribution. If you perform GL Entry Distribute Automatically Report more than once per period, the amounts posted are duplicated. If you are posting to a prior period and you have run the GL Entry Distribute Automatically Report manually post any distribution to avoid duplication.