General ledger in the public sector overview

This article describes the General ledger functionality that's available for organizations in the public sector.

How do General ledger parameters need to be set for public sector organizations?

Most General ledger parameters are set the same way for public sector and private sector organizations. In addition, there are public sector parameters that are used for the year-end process for funds. Set these parameters on the General ledger parameters page, in the Ledger section, on the Fiscal year close FastTab:

• Select Create closing transactions during transfer to generate the closing and opening balance entries. When this is selected, on subsequent runs of this process, the system deletes transactions from previous runs and generates new closing and opening entries. If this is not selected, the system will calculate the net change and generate only that transaction for closing entries and opening balances. Note: This option requires the use of posting definitions. To learn more, see Posting definitions in the public sector.
• Select Use Fund dimension for year-end transactions to enable the public sector version of the Opening transactions page.
• Select Use Fund dimension to carry forward purchase orders to enable the ability to set year-end processing options for specific funds.

To learn more about the year-end process for funds, see Year-end processing in the public sector.

What fund classes and fund types are available?

Governmental, proprietary, and fiduciary fund classes are available for public sector organizations, along with a Memo class. You’ll create the fund types your organization needs. To learn more, see Funds in the public sector.

How are financial dimensions used with funds?

Fund numbers are used as dimension values in financial account numbers where a dimension has been mapped to a fund. Public sector organizations usually require balanced entries for financial dimensions related to funds.

What is the easiest way to adjust or reverse ledger entries?

You can use advanced ledger entries to create, adjust, and reverse ledger entries. For example, advanced ledger entries can be used to reclassify expenditures if invoices are mistakenly posted to the wrong account or project. To learn more, see Advanced ledger entries in the public sector and Posting definitions in the public sector.

Why should I use posting definitions?

You can use posting definitions to create subledger journal lines for originating transactions that meet selected criteria - for example, to generate multiple balanced ledger entries based on attributes such as transaction types and accounts. Posting definitions provide granular control over the general ledger updates created by source documents in contrast to the broadly applied updates of posting profiles. General ledger posting definitions are required if you use advanced ledger entries. Posting definitions are used in the year-end processing of general ledger accounts. Posting definitions can be used to close the accounts to fund balances or retained earnings, based on the fund class and the account close type. Posting definitions are required to close the general ledger accounts and to transfer balances to the opening period in the new fiscal year. To learn more, see Posting definitions in the public sector.

How do I collect and analyze data to meet the Common Governmentwide Accounting Classification (CGAC) requirements?

You can use derived financial hierarchies to collect and analyze posted transaction data for specific main account numbers, full account numbers, and financial dimension values. To learn more, see Derived financial hierarchies in the public sector.

Additional resources

General ledger and Financial reporting overview