Reporting Signs and Variances

Selecting the Normal Sign

It is the convention for financial reports to print amounts without a debit or credit indicator. If debit amounts occur on a row for an account which would normally show a credit amount, for example, for income, they are shown as negative. Similarly, if credit amounts occur on a row for an account which normally shows a debit amount, for example expenditure, they are shown as negative.

Financial Statements and Financial Tables can be produced using this convention, but you must indicate whether the 'normal' sign expected is debit or credit. This is required on Line and Total row types in Financial Statement Rows, and on Row and Total row types in Financial Table Rows.

If an amount on a line has the opposite Debit/Credit indicator to the one chosen as the Normal sign for the line, it is identified on the report as 'negative'. In Financial Statement Layouts (FSL) you can specify whether a minus sign or brackets are used to indicate negative values.

Reporting Variances

Variance columns are signed according to a favourable/unfavourable convention. For example, an increase in income would be considered a favourable variance and be shown as positive, whilst an increase in expenditure would be considered unfavourable, and be shown as negative.

This is achieved by showing positive variances on a line which is normally credit, as unsigned, and positive variances on a line which is normally debit, as negative.

In Financial Statements, you can create your own variance columns codes AV, BV, through to ZV.

Reversing the Sign

You can reverse the sign to exclude a particular account or code from a range of accounts or codes. A continuation row should be created for the account or code with the Reverse Sign option set. This would have the effect of reversing out the code values from the original range of codes.