Ledger postings and budget checking

Ledger postings can be made in the Purchasing module. If commitment accounting is used, then when a purchase order is placed, a posting to the Commitment ledger can be made.

When receiving the goods or an invoice, this Commitment ledger posting is reversed, and a posting is made to the Actual ledger. These postings normally correlate with budget checking consumption of commitment and expenditure amounts.

Note: Ledger postings and budget checking are separate functions and have no link in SunSystems. They work independently of each other, and may contain different amounts and periods. Therefore, care must be taken when extracting data for reporting purposes as the data may differ.

Data may be different between ledger postings and budget checking for several reasons.

For example, the period used for ledger postings is different to that used for budget checking. Ledger posting periods are defined in the Purchase Type (PTS) stages and are:

Order Period (period entered on the order)
Order Entry
Order Confirmation Period
Invoice Period (period entered on the invoice)
Invoice Matching Period
Invoice Confirmation Period.

The period used for budget checking is the period in which the budget is consumed. Using the navigation method, this can be one, two or many periods. So, if there is no available budget in the current period, but there is available budget in a previous period, budget checking may use this period.

The following is an example of a transaction being entered:


Stage	Period Performed	Budget Checking/Comments	Budget Checking/Period	Ledger Postings/Comments	Ledger Postings/Period
Order Entry	01/200X	No budget checking		No ledger posting
Order Confirmation	02/200X	Budget commitment amount increased	No budget this period, but budget last period 01/200X	Commitment ledger posting	Stage defined on Purchase Type: If OE=01/200X If OC=02/200X
Invoice Entry	03/200X	No budget checking		No ledger posting
Invoice Matching	04/200X	No budget checking		No ledger posting
Invoice Confirmation	05/200X	Budget commitment amount reduced	Period = 02/200X	Commitment reversal	Stage defined on Purchase Type reversal: If OE=01/200X If OC=02/200X
Invoice Confirmation	05/200X	Expenditure amount increased	Period = 02/200X	Actual ledger posting	IE=03/200X IM=04/200X IC=05/200X

Note: If budget checking data is required, then reports from the budget tables should be used. If financial reports are required, then reports from the ledgers can be used. However, great care must be taken if budget checking reports are obtained from the financial ledgers.