Defining accounting units

An accounting unit represents a reporting or posting level within your general ledger company. It can represent a division, department, region, store, or other business entity. You use accounting units at different levels in your company to reflect your business needs and organizational structure. This procedure describes the process for defining accounting units.

Before you define your accounting units, you must define your company. You should also carefully plan your accounting unit structure on paper before defining it in General Ledger.

Procedure flow: defining accounting units

To interface accounting units from a non-Lawson system, use Accounting Unit Interface (GL161). See Interfacing data into General Ledger.

  1. Access Accounting Units-Accounts (GL20.1).
    Note: You must define accounting units on previous levels first. For example, define accounting units for level one before defining accounting units for level two.
  2. Define general information about the accounting unit on the Main form tab using these guidelines:
    Accounting Unit

    The name that you assign to an accounting unit must be unique, but you can use the same description for multiple accounting units. Name posting accounting units numerically to preserve ten-key efficiency in General Ledger and subsystems.

    Type

    Select whether you are defining a summary or posting accounting unit. Define all summary accounting units before posting accounting units, or define one summary accounting unit and its posting accounting units.

    Account Currency

    You can select the currency code that you want to store account balances in. The account currency you define here becomes the default account currency for accounts added later to the accounting unit. If you leave this field blank, then the balances are stored in the company base currency.

    This account currency overrides any account currency that you assigned in Chart of Accounts (GL00.1). Changing this account currency in the future does not override the account currency on any existing accounts.

  3. Assign levels to the accounting unit on the Levels form tab using these guidelines:
    Level Address

    The level address identifies the location of the accounting unit in the general ledger company structure. The system uses the level address to consolidate and report information for accounting units. Level addresses are used to create the roll-up structure for a company.

    Define accounting units from the top of your company to the bottom to assign the correct level address to each accounting unit. For example, you must define 01-00-00 before you can define 01-01-00. You should define a unique level address for each accounting unit.

    New Address, Effective Date

    Use these fields only if you are moving an accounting unit to a new location in the company structure. See Moving an accounting unit.

  4. To use address and communication information in Report Writer, define accounting unit address and communication information on the Address form tab.
  5. To use additional information for the accounting unit, which can be used by Report Writer, define user fields.
  6. If you use attributes, then you should assign attribute values to accounting units using Values by Attribute (GL20.5) or Attributes (GL20.7). See Using Attribute Matrix attributes.
    Note: The information that you define on System Accounting Units (GL20.6) applies to the entire company.

    You must designate the accounting unit that you want to associate with the system accounts, as described in the succeeding step, before you can post entries to General Ledger. System accounts are detail accounts that you use to post error suspense, undistributed retained earnings, retained earnings, translation gain, and translation loss transactions.

    Note: If you use zones, then you must specify accounting units for the system accounts for each zone using Define Zone (GL30.2).
  7. Click System Accounting Unit on GL20.1 to access System Accounting Units (GL20.6). Select the system accounting units for the company; you define the system accounting units once for each company. Consider these field.
    Balance Sheet, Income Statement

    Select a balance sheet accounting unit and an income statement accounting unit. The balance sheet and income statement accounting unit can be the same. The income statement accounting unit is used if the same system accounts are in the income statement of the chart of accounts.

    These accounting units are used in conjunction with System Accounts (GL00.7) to create system generated entries. For example, they can be used to post retained earnings, undistributed retained earnings, error suspense, currency translation gains or losses, report currency adjustments, or other auto adjustments.

  8. Assign detail accounts to posting accounting units to create posting accounts. You can do this manually or use dynamic account generation. See Defining posting accounts.
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