Setting Up Allocation Targets

An allocation target identifies the target account to be updated by an allocation. The allocation transaction generated by an allocation run posts to this target account. You can also identify the business unit and ledger for the target account. For example, you may wish to allocate costs across business units, or generate budget transactions.

For a charge type allocation, the allocation target also identifies the target offset account. This is the account to which the balancing reversal transactions are posted. If the target account is in a different business unit to the source account, the target offset account transactions are required to keep the target business unit in balance.

You can choose to consolidate the target and target offset posting transactions, to reduce the number of postings generated.

Allocation targets are described in more detail in What are Allocation Targets?

Corporate Allocation Targets (CAT)

The Allocation Targets form contains the following:

Header Information

Allocation Target Code: A code uniquely identifying the allocation target details.

Allocation Target Name: A descriptive name for these allocation target details.

General

Target Account: The account code to which the allocation transactions are posted. Postings to this account take the same debit/credit indicator as the source amount. If you select a memorandum account code here, you must also select a memorandum account code as the balancing, target offset account.

Target: The target value.

Offset Account: The account code to which the balancing, reversal entry for each target account transaction should be posted. The target offset account is always in the same business unit as the target account.This offset account is required when:

the allocation type is Charge.
the source and target business units are different in which case this offset account is the balancing account in the target business unit.
the allocation type is Charge or Split and you have specified an offset account on the allocation source.

You must select a memorandum account code here if you selected a memorandum account code for the target account.

Target Actual/Budget: The ledger to which the target transactions are posted. This can be different to the ledger selected in the allocation source. For example, you can use corporate allocations to calculate budget values based on actual source values.

Analysis Dimension

The transaction analysis dimension containing the business unit code you want to use as the target business unit. This allows the target business unit to change automatically according to the analysis code on the source transactions.

For example, if ledger analysis dimension 1 is selected here to identify the target business unit, then during Corporate Allocations Run (CAL), the ledger analysis dimension 1 code from the source transactions is scanned and used on the target allocation transactions. The resulting target transactions are grouped by this analysis code i.e. by business unit, for posting to the target business units.

An entry here takes precedence over an entry in the Business Unit field below.

Or Business Unit: The business unit to which the target postings should be made. This should be blank if the business unit is being identified in an analysis dimension which has been entered above, or if the target business unit is the same as the source business unit.

Asset Code: The asset code to be included on the generated target transactions, if required. Leave this blank to retain the asset code from the source transactions.

Asset Subcode: The asset subcode to be included on the generated target transactions, if required. Leave this blank to retain the asset subcode from the source transactions. See Presetting the Asset Posting Analysis Codes for more information on asset subcodes.

Asset Indicator: The type of asset values to be updated by the allocation posting. Asset Value is used to update the asset value. Depreciation is used to update the asset depreciation value. Initial is used to update the initial value. Retain Marker will select the asset marker from the source transactions. Select No Marker if no asset marker is required.
See How are the Asset Values Updated? for more information on how this indicator is used.

Consolidation

Target: The postings to the target account are consolidated for these selected analysis dimensions, if required. This enables you to reduce the number of postings generated by the allocation.

Target Offset: The postings to the offset target account are consolidated for these selected analysis dimensions, if required. This enables you to reduce the number of postings generated by the allocation.