Recurring Transfer of General Ledger Transactions to External Financial System

This document describes the solution for transferring general ledger transactions in the M3 General Ledger to an external financial system such as S3. Such a transfer is applicable to customers who have another system installed as the financial solution for enterprise accounting but have some part of their business that either manufactures or distributes products for which they use M3. The solution described in this document enables those customers to continue with their financial system as the legacy system.

The M3 solution is based on the existing functionality in the M3 Group Consolidation module, as described in Enabling M3 Group Consolidation and Managing Group Consolidation, with a modified setup and process.

This document describes the setup and workflow in M3 using the S3 financial system as an example of the receiver of transactions. However, the same workflow applies to other systems with the applicable changes made.

In this document, the 'delivering division' is the party that transfers transactions (corresponding to the S3 business unit). The receiving company is the company in the external system.

Outcome

You understand the reasons for the transfer and which parameters apply.

Use this information to set up the M3 Group Consolidation module and to transfer transactions.

Before You Start

  • You must understand the accounting policies of the delivering division and the receiving company.
  • The chart of accounts of the delivering division must be defined in 'Accounting Identity. Open' (CRS630).
  • The currency must be defined in 'Currency. Open' (CRS055).
  • Infor Enterprise Collaborator must be set up in addition to the M3 Business Message initiator that will initiate the generation of the electronic file using a business message. For details, see the design document for the message.

Follow These Steps

The setup is done in the delivering division exclusively. In regular group consolidation, the subsidiary is registered in 'Settings – Subsidiary' (GMS010) and the parent company is registered in 'Parent Company. Open' (GMS090). In the transfer to an external system, however, the settings in (GMS010) and (GMS090) both refer to the delivering division.

  1. Set the basic rules for the delivering system

    Define the following in 'Settings – Subsidiary' (GMS010):

    • Enter the ID for the delivering division. This is the ID that will be used when you define settings in the following activity in 'Settings – Parent Company'. The ID connects the settings in (GMS010) and (GMS090).
    • Enter the consolidation currency. This is the local currency of the delivering division.
    • Define the owner share as 100%. This is the percentage of the holding of each account that the delivering division sends to the receiving company.
    • Select external transfer of general ledger transactions.

  2. Register the delivering division

    Register the delivering division as a subsidiary in the same division in 'Settings – Parent Company' (GMS090).

    Define the following:

    • Enter contact information such as telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.
    • Select the delivering division's local currency as the consolidation currency.
    • Define the owner share as 100%.
    • Define mapping fields 1 and 2.

    The settings are stored in the GMCOMP table.

    Purpose of Mapping Fields

    Mapping field 1 defines the organizational relationship between the transactions transferred and the S3 organization code. The ID of the latter usually corresponds to a combination of the IDs of the M3 company and division, followed by the ID of an additional organization unit such as cost center or department that corresponds to the S3 accounting unit. The organization code in S3 program GL08.2 is alphanumeric and can be up to 35 positions long.

    Mapping field 2 defines the account relationship between the transactions transferred and a specific S3 account code and its subaccounts. The account code in S3 program GL09.2 is also alphanumeric, up to 25 positions long.

    You map the fields in (GMS090) by entering a sequence number for the applicable objects: company, division, and the seven accounting dimensions in the accounting string. The sequence number determines the order in which the IDs are presented in the S3 codes. For mapping field 1, company always has sequence number 1 and division has sequence number 2. The values retrieved from mapping fields 1 and 2 will be saved in fields MAF1 and MAF in the GMMCEL table for each transaction in the transfer proposal and transferred with each transaction.

    Sometimes the object names are shorter than the maximum length for the accounting dimension and would therefore be followed by blank spaces in the mapping field value. In this case, the blank spaces are automatically deleted.

    Example

    Mapping field 1 includes company, division, and accounting dimension 2, which represents cost centers. The IDs of these objects will be merged into one organizational code, so that transactions transferred from company COM, division DIV, will be assigned organizational code COMDIV(ID of cost center retrieved from the individual transaction).

  3. Configure Transfer of Transactions

    For the delivering division, define how to process transactions for the transfer in 'Settings – Transfer of General Ledger' (GMS015):

    • Select the accounting dimensions whose transactions you want to transfer.
    • Select whether to convert the chart of accounts to the receiving company's chart of accounts based on the account conversion table (see below).

    Since all transactions are transferred in the local currency of the delivering division, no exchange rate type is used.

  4. Define Conversion of Chart of Accounts

    You might want to aggregate or total transactions from several accounts into one account. For example, you might want all the revenue transactions on accounts 3000 to 3400 aggregated into one account, 3000. In this case, you define the ranges of the M3 accounts to be totaled when transferring all the transactions in the range in 'Account Conversion. Open Table' (GMS100). If you selected to include other accounting dimensions, for example, the accounting dimension for cost center, these will affect the aggregation: Transactions are totaled for account 3000 and cost center 100, for account 3000 and cost center 200, and so on.

The Transfer

  1. Create Transfer Proposal

    The delivering division creates a proposal with external transactions from its general ledger in 'Consolidation Proposal. Create/Transfer' (GMS200).

    The proposal is based on the period and range of accounting dates the delivering division selects. The selected period is the period according to the delivering division's period table. The accounting dates are the start and end dates for transactions at the delivering division to be included in the transfer.

    The B panel displays the number of records, total debit amount, and total credit amount for each proposal. These values provide an audit trail between M3 and S3 that can be used to ensure that all transactions are transferred correctly.

    The proposal header is stored in the GMCOPR table. The transactions themselves are stored in the GMMSUGL.

  2. Verify and Adjust Proposal

    The delivering division reviews the proposal, either onscreen in (GMS200) or by printing it. The division can adjust the consolidation proposal by entering journal vouchers in 'Journal Voucher. Open' (GLS100) before creating a new proposal.

  3. Transfer Transactions

    When the delivering division approves the proposal in (GMS200), all transactions in the GMMSUGL table are copied to the GMMCEL table. Infor Enterprise Collaborator then creates an electronic file. API program GMS200MI retrieves and transfers data from (GMS010) and tables GMCOPR and GMMCEL. All general ledger transactions included in the final transfer are assigned status 9 in the 'Transferred to group consolidation' field in 'General Ledger. Display Transactions' (GLS211/F).

  4. Receive Transactions

    The receiving company uploads the file in the S3 interface program (GL165). The file creates two updates: by business unit via the organization code and by account code. The conversion of the mapping fields is done entirely on the S3 side.

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