A hierarchy is an ordered series of related objects. You can relate hierarchy with “pyramid” - where each step of the pyramid is subordinate to the one above it. One can use drill up or down to perform multi-dimensional analysis with a hierarchy. Multi-dimensional analysis uses dimension objects organized in a meaningful order and allows users to observe data from various viewpoints.
A hierarchy is an ordered series of related objects. You can relate hierarchy with “pyramid” - where each step of the pyramid is subordinate to the one above it. One can use drill up or down to perform multi-dimensional analysis with a hierarchy. Multi-dimensional analysis uses dimension objects organized in a meaningful order and allows users to observe data from various viewpoints. These hierarchies need to be mapped to systems to ensure they are capturing the relevant business process information at relevant nodes to provide meaningful information for internal and external reporting.
The account hierarchy allows you to map complex organizational structures of a business partner (for example, buying group, co-operative or chain of retail outlets). When you create a hierarchy structure, you form groups of business partners (for example, for purchasing groups). You can use them for statistical purposes and for marketing and accounting and other meaningful analyses.
Organizational hierarchies represent the relationships between the units/segments that make up your business.
Larger organizations may require some hierarchies that are based on business units and other hierarchies that are based on shared services, such as human resources and IT. They need to create cost centers in shared service departments and position them under business units, so that the costs of shared services are appropriately allocated. Now we will explore some examples of reporting needs arising out of these different hierarchies and dimensions. Any how they add complexity at transactional level to record relevant information appropriately.
Some areas where we need to deal with dimensions/hierarchies are:
Defining organizational hierarchies enable to view and report on your business from different perspectives. You set up a hierarchy of legal entities for tax, legal, regulatory or statutory reporting. Various Legal entities can enter into legal contracts and are required to prepare statements that report on their performance. While performing business activities we need to capture and classify transactions at legal entity level to be able to identify transactions that belong to a specific legal entity. Therefore, there exists a need to define boundary at legal entity level to enable data classification, consolidation, security and reporting at these entity levels.
A large corporate may create a central mailroom to receive all invoices from its vendors for which it need to make payment. These invoices are raised on separate legal entities within the same corporate group, but mailed to a central processing center for accounting and payment. The shared service resource who is working on these invoices must specify in the Accounting System the different legal entities to ensure proper treatment of these transactions. The payments should be issued from the respective bank accounts belonging to the legal entity on which the invoice has been raised.
You can create a hierarchy for purchasing function to control purchasing policies, rules, and business processes.
Business Metrics for Management Reporting
Business metric is a quantifiable measure of an organization's behavior, activities, and performance used to access the status of the targeted business process. Traditionally many metrics were finance based, inwardly focusing on the performance of the organization. Businesses can use various metrics available to monitor, evaluate, and improve their performance across any of the focus areas like sales, sourcing, IT or operations.
GL - Review & Approve Journals
Review and Approval mechanisms ensure that the accounting transaction is reasonable, necessary, and comply with applicable policies. Understand why we need review and approval processes, what are they, and how they are performed in automated general ledger systems. Learn the benefits of having journal approval mechanisms in place.
There are five types of core accounts to capture any accounting transaction. Apart from these fundamental accounts, some other special-purpose accounts are used to ensure the integrity of financial transactions. Some examples of such accounts are clearing accounts, suspense accounts, contra accounts, and intercompany accounts. Understand the importance and usage of these accounts.
Global Business Services (GBS) Model
Global business services (GBS) is an integrated, scalable, and mature version of the shared services model. Global Business Services Model is a result of shared services maturing and evolving on a global scale. It is represented by the growth and maturity of the Shared services to better service the global corporations they support.
There are two commonly used methods of accounting - Cash Basis and the Accruals Basis. Understand the difference between accruals and reversals. Recap the earlier discussion we had on accruals and reversals and see the comparison between these two different but related accounting concepts. Understand how the action of accruing results in reversals subsequently in the accounting cycle.
A legal entity is an artificial person having separate legal standing in the eyes of law. A Legal entity represents a legal company for which you prepare fiscal or tax reports. A legal entity is any company or organization that has legal rights and responsibilities, including tax filings.
The sole trader organization (also called proprietorship) is the oldest form of organization and the most common form of organization for small businesses even today. In a proprietorship the enterprise is owned and controlled only by one person. This form is one of the most popular forms because of the advantages it offers. It is the simplest and easiest to form.
In this article we will focus on and understand the accounting process which enables the accounting system to provide the necessary information to business stakeholders. We will deep dive into each of the steps of accounting and will understand how to identify accounting transactions and the process for recording accounting information and transactions.
Horizontal or Flat Organizational Structures
Flat organizational structure is an organizational model with relatively few or no levels of middle management between the executives and the frontline employees. Its goal is to have as little hierarchy as possible between management and staff level employees. In a flat organizational structure, employees have increased involvement in the decision-making process.
This article explains the process of entering and importing general ledger journals in automated accounting systems. Learn about the basic validations that must happen before the accounting data can be imported from any internal or external sub-system to the general ledger. Finally, understand what we mean by importing in detail or in summary.
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