Summary of 10/26/00 G/L Team Meeting

 

Attendees:  Ben Martin                  

                   Tim Miller                  

                   Cathy Zinszer

                   Dave Adkins

                   Karen D’Amato

       Linda Somers         

      

                  

Excused:    Jeff Quirico

 

Decisions:  None

 

Task:  The G/L Team members will complete all outstanding visitations and narratives on

           peripheral databases and submit them to Ben as soon as possible. 

 

Task:  The G/L Team will identify required reports and submit to Ben a “report

           summary” along with samples of reports as soon as possible.

 

Task:  Use setup instructions from Scott Smith and experiment with the PS University

           single user version (SUV).

 

Task:  In SUV, look at panels (setup panels, processing panels, and query tables) and

           look at the data in relationship to current data dictionaries and query screens.

           Keep track of what you’ve found (noting data we have and data we don’t)

 

Task:  Start thinking about the Chart Fields and the user defined fields.

 

 

Ben began the meeting informing the team about PS training information that he received from Roby.  There will be General Ledger 1, PS 7.5 training scheduled on December

8-12 in Bethesda, Maryland and also on December 19-22 in Conshohocken, PA.

 

The meeting proceeded with a 45 minute discussion on periods, calendars and time spans from People Books.   In the PS General Ledger, you can maintain an unlimited number of accounting periods over any span of years.   The calendar actually determines the beginning and ending dates of each accounting period. You can maintain traditional monthly periods, including an additional adjustment period, or you can define your own, right down to the choice of beginning and ending dates.  You can establish an accounting period configuration that is based on the beginning and ending period dates that you normally use, and combine these periods to create calendars.

 

 PS General Ledger supports multiple calendars, so you can keep a calendar for actuals, another for budget and forecast activity, and still others for special reporting or transitional needs.  You can easily manage a conversion to different accounting periods, or to a new fiscal year, by maintaining two overlapping calendars.  Your detail calendar controls the number and duration of accounting periods (how many accounting periods are in your fiscal year).  You can have any number of periods or years open at any time.  You can use summary calendars to group detail calendar periods for inquiries and reporting. 

 

Time Spans let you easily select and retrieve ledger balances for use in allocations, inquires, and reporting.  The Time Span controls the number of periods for which data is extracted from ledger table and summarized.  They include:

 

 PER -  Retrieves only activity for the period selected.

YTD – Includes year-to –date amounts for the items selected.

BAL – Retrieves life-to –date amounts (balance forward amounts) for balance

            sheet accounts.

 

PS General Ledger uses the Calendar to validate absolute periods and years that you enter for the Time Span.

 

After discussing periods, calendars, and time spans the group has concluded that we should be able to maintain our current process for month end and year-end closes.  PS offers other options that we can explore to change or enhance our current system.

 

Ben asked the G/L team if everyone has a copy of the GA data dictionaries.  Ben will check into printing out GA tables for us to use along with the data dictionaries.  Our assignment for discussion at our next meeting will be to start exploring the panels dealing with journals in PS, and compare the PS tables to GA data dictionaries and tables.