General Ledger Codes

Prerequisites

• Financial analytics - describes the current tools available to categorise financial data using SupportAbility.
• Finance Integration Strategy - outlines important considerations regarding Invoicing, and the different options for processing Invoices for the NDIA.

Summary 

This article discusses: 

• Understanding General Ledger Codes, and 
• General Ledger Code Strategy

Understanding General Ledger Codes

Accounts are used to categorise income and expenses into logical groups in an organisation's Finance system and the list of all accounts within a finance system is called the Chart of Accounts.

A  General Ledger Code (GL Code) is a unique shorthand code or number given to each account in the Chart of Accounts within the Finance system. 

The GL code is what systems like SupportAbility use to categorise revenue data (e.g. invoices) and and attach it to an Account before it is exported for the Finance system. This way, the Finance system knows how much revenue is attributed to each Account in the Chart of Accounts.

Example

We may choose to structure the revenue accounts in our finance system by Service:

And our Finance system may have the following GL codes associated:

In this scenario, we would enter these GL Codes into each Site record for each of these Services against the Funding Type SupportAbility is being used to generate Internal [Direct] Invoice batches for e.g. NDIS. 

Please note, this is outlined in comprehensive detail in the Configuring General Ledger Codes for Internal [Direct] Invoices article linked below. 

In this scenario, provided the GL Codes have been configured correctly in SupportAbility, when an Invoice is generated for an Activity facilitated by the Day Service where the Client being Invoiced is paying using NDIS Funding, SupportAbility automatically allocates the GL code that has been configured e.g. GL-DS01, to this invoice, so that the Finance system can categorise this revenue and attribute it to the correct account. 

Thus, when it is time to generate a Profit and Loss statement, the revenue data imported from SupportAbility will be categorised correctly by each Account in the Chart of Accounts.

General Ledger Code Strategy

When Invoice or Timesheet Batches are generated using SupportAbility, the associated GL Code is automatically allocated to the revenue or expense data, based on how this has been configured. 

Client Funding GL Codes

Firstly, your organisation needs to decide which invoices you will be generating using SupportAbility. For example, if you will be using SupportAbility to manage NDIS funding, then you will need to generate invoices for: 

• the NDIA (hence the importance of considering your Finance Integration Strategy as per the Prerequisites),
• Plan Managers, and/or
• Clients or their Nominee (where they are Self Managing their NDIS package).

SupportAbility is able to allocate a Client Funding GL Code to any unique combination of:

• Site,
• Service, and/or
• Payment Method (Funding Type e.g. NDIS, or Billable - No Funding).

Some providers choose to categorise revenue based on Funding Type alone e.g. NDIS, whereas others choose to categorise revenue based on Service type e.g. Day Services. 

As outlined above, SupportAbility can accommodate any unique combination of Site, Service and Funding Type. Therefore, if this is the level of granularity needed on your Profit and Loss Statement, a unique code could be created for any revenue generated by a particular Service at a specific Site using a distinct Funding Type e.g. NDIS-funded Day Services delivered from the Melbourne HQ Site.

This would provide revenue information regarding these specific combinations. Revenue from NDIS-funded Day Services delivered at the Melbourne HQ Site, would be accounted for separately to NDIS-funded Day Services delivered at the Sydney Site, or NDIS-funded In Home Care Services delivered at the Melbourne HQ Site; and the Profit and Loss Statement would reflect this. 

This is possible as each of these Site, Service and Funding Type options would have a unique account and GL Code not only in your organisation's Finance system, but also configured in SupportAbility. Therefore, when Invoices are generated and imported into your organisation's Finance system, the revenue data is attributed to the correct Account. 

Staff Time Sheet GL Codes

For SupportAbility to be able to allocate Staff Time Sheet expenses to the correct account within your organisation's Payroll system, it needs to know the codes for the relevant expense accounts.

Firstly, your organisation needs to decide which Staff Time Sheets you will be generating using SupportAbility. If your organisation is not ready to integrate with Payroll, this can be skipped for now and returned to at a later stage if and when required. 

If your organisation has determined a Payroll Integration Strategy and knows which Staff you wish to generate Time Sheet batches for, then Staff Time Sheet GL Codes must be configured. 

More information regarding this can be found in the Payroll Integration Strategy article. 

SupportAbility is able to allocate a Staff Timesheet GL Code to any unique combination of:

• Site, and/or
• Service.

Configuring General Ledger Codes

Please review the following articles where relevant for more information regarding configuring General Ledger Codes: 

• Configuring General Ledger Codes for Internal [Direct] Invoices
• Configuring General Ledger Codes for External [Plan Managed] Invoices