Accounting Transaction Details

This report details the monthly transaction activity for each General and Subsidiary ledger account. If there was no transaction activity for the month, then a detail transaction report will not be printed for that particular account. Depending on the type of account, General or Subsidiary, different information will be displayed on this report. Please review the Explanation of the Chart of Accounts to understand the differences between a General ledger and Subsidiary ledger account before proceeding.
 
 

Report of Transactions for General Ledger Accounts

The General Ledger account represents the balance sheet, which reflects the financial position at a specific point in time. GL accounts record how much is owned by the University (Assets), how much the University owes (Liabilities) and the difference between the two (Fund Balance or Net Worth). The Subsidiary Ledger will detail the transactions that affect the Assets, Liabilities and Fund Balance, which bring the General Ledger to its specific position in time. General Ledger accounts will follow the fund accounting equation:

The Report of Transactions for the GL accounts will detail the monthly activity under the Account Controls that support the categories on the General Ledger Fund Group Summary (Balance 7/1, Additions, Deductions, Present Balance, Liabilities, Non cash Assets and Cash). For instance, let us suppose that the following appears for a GL account on the General Ledger Fund Group Summary:

The detail on the Report of Transactions for the above would appear as follows:
 

CM = "current month"

The report begins with the "Account Control" column. This column lists out the General Ledger 4-digit account controls (similar to the SL subcodes) that have participated in some balance sheet activity of the fund. Several of these account controls also serve as summaries. Please refer to the following FRS webpage for a complete listing of these Account Controls

Remember that these account controls represent asset, liability and fund balance activities and pertain only to General Ledger accounts. Subcodes belong to Subsidiary Ledgers and detail the revenue and expense items that will map up to the General Ledger.

The next column of this report is the "Description" and serves to describe the activity that the account control is reflecting or the name of the account control. The "Date" and "TC" columns represent the date that the activity was posted and the transaction code that was used to create the change in FRS. Refer to FRS Transaction Codes for a complete listing of the transaction codes and descriptions. "Ref" and "2^nd Ref" further describe the activity. They may be such items as Purchase Order numbers, Employee Ids, JV references, etc. and usually identifies the document that generates the transaction and/or its source.

The "J.E. Offset Account" stands for Journal Entry Offset Account. A journal entry (J.E.) records the effects of an internal accounting change such as an incurred liability, interfund transfer or internal redistribution of an expense. These types of transactions do not involve an actual exchange of cash, but will still produce a change in the dollar balances. They are considered direct updates. Therefore, when such a transaction occurs there must be an offsetting account to receive the change. That "offset" account is reflected in this column and is always displayed as a 10-digit account number. By displaying the account number in this manner one is able to see the account control affected by the journal entry.

The "Previous Balance" shows how much was attributable to the specified account control at the beginning of the month before the transactions displayed under the "Current month" heading transpired. This value is also the "Total To Date" amount found in last month's report. The "Previous Balance" is always a total for the account control, whereas the transactions are all detailed.

The "Total to Date" values in this report correspond to those shown in the General Ledger Fund Group Summary. Since the General Ledger Fund Summary indicates for the above example that there are no Liabilities (Accounts Payable, Notes Payable, etc.) there will be no account controls of the 2xxx category appearing on the Report of Transactions. This is also the case for the Non-cash Assets. If the example had indicated that there had been activity under these categories, then account controls beginning with '2 ' and '1' would have been seen in this report and would have summed to their respective totals as reflected in the General Ledger Fund Group Summary. The account control 1100 appears for the Cash category, which had activity and has been separated out from the Non-cash assets. The General Ledger Fund Group Summary also indicated that there was activity under the Additions & Deductions columns. Hence, account controls beginning with 4, 5, 93, 95 may appear on the Report of Transactions.

The last two columns, "Batch Ref" and "Batch date" indicate the batch that sent the transaction to FRS as well as the send date. The date does not necessarily reflect when the transaction updated FRS. An example would be the payroll batches. These amounts update FRS usually 2 weeks after the batch date. Not all transactions will necessarily have a batch reference or date, especially if the activity was not done through the batch process. Please refer to Batch References for a complete listing of the batch references used by FRS.

The "Fund Balance Change" subtotal indicates the net change that occurred against the fund balance since the last month. In other words, this is the total of all changes that occurred in the current month. By subtotaling the "Current Month" column, the result should be equal to the "fund balance change" value.

The above is a fairly simple example of how the Report of Transactions relates to the General Ledger Fund Summary. The summary for the Report of Transactions is displayed on screen 018 of FRS. Now let's look at how it works with the Subsidiary Ledger Fund Summary.
 
 

Report of Transactions for Subsidiary Ledger Accounts

The Explanation of the Chart of Accounts describes the relationship that exists between a Subsidiary Ledger account and a General Ledger. The Subsidiary Ledger provides the detail as to how the General Ledger reached its current financial position. Please recall that a Subsidiary Ledger must always maps to a General Ledger…..it records the revenue and expense activity that affects a particular General Ledger account control for Assets, Liabilities and Fund Balances.

The Report of Transactions for a Subsidiary Ledger account is very similar to that for the General Ledger. The first seven columns are nearly identical. There is a small difference in the first column where instead of indicating an Account control, the 4-digit code is referred to as the Object or Sub code. Please refer to the FRS web site, Subcode Descriptions, for complete descriptions of these Subsidiary Ledger subcodes.

As explained in the Chart of Accounts, the Subsidiary Ledger account records the revenue and expense amounts that relate to its General Ledger. The revenue and expense amounts for the reporting month are detailed under the "Rev/Exp" column. Monthly changes that affect the budget are found under "budget entries" and encumbrances that have been liquidated or added will be shown under the "Open commitment" column. The user needs to remember that the detail shown on this report is for the current reporting month only and is not year-to-date like the Account Statement.

For help in reading the Report of Transactions or any other monthly financial report, please go to the website: http://accountingoffice.uconn.edu/ to find the telephone number of an accountant that can explain your account activity.