Using Alternate Account

This chapter provides an overview of alternate accounts and discusses how to:

• Enable alternate accounts.

• Add and map accounts and alternate accounts.

Understanding Alternate Accounts

In addition to the following overview, this section also discusses:

• Alternate account mapping and setID sharing.

• Prerequisites.

PeopleSoft delivers alternate account functionality for its applications as an optional feature to meet the accounting and reporting requirements of multinational organizations that operate in locations, jurisdictions, or countries where statutory or local chart of accounts and reporting rules are mandatory.

By using alternate account, you can enter and maintain both a statutory (local) account value and a corporate (internal) account value at the detail transaction level within General Ledger, as well as within its feeder applications. Alternate account operates with and fully supports the conventional corporate chart of accounts that is required for internal management and external financial reporting. You can also perform year-end closing on alternate account only.

Throughout this documentation ALTACCT, AltAccount, alternate account and local or statutory account are synonymous terms and are used interchangeably.

In addition, ACCOUNT, account, and internal or corporate account are synonymous terms and are also used interchangeably.

Implementing alternate account in General Ledger and its feeder systems, such as Receivables and Payables, requires close coordination of ChartFields, business units and ledgers within the system. Alternate account is best put into place when it is a part of the original overall implementation plan; however, you can add it at a later date.

Note. Alternate account is intended to fulfill a journal line statutory, or local, reporting requirement. Non-statutory ledger reporting can best be served by using trees, summary ledgers, and PS/nVision to manipulate the account structure and fulfill corporate ledger balance reconciliation and reporting requirements. Do not use the alternate account feature for ledger-level reporting requirements that are not associated with statutory compliance. The alternate account feature increases maintenance as it requires an additional detail chart of alternate accounts.

Alternate account is designed for international companies to meet local or national statutory requirements at the journal line or transaction level. Therefore, it is available in General Ledger, as well as general ledger feeder applications, subsystems, and other products, as detailed in the following list:

• Payables

• Receivables

• Asset Management

• Billing

• Expenses

• General Ledger

• Inventory

• Cash Management

• Deal Management

• Risk Management

• Order Management

• Projects

• Purchasing

General Ledger is not required to use alternate account with other PeopleSoft products.

You map ALTACCT and ACCOUNT values to one another in either a one-to-one or one-to-many relationship.

The basic level of reporting is defined by the level of detail in the statutory chart of accounts. The most common scenario is that of one or many account values mapped to one alternate account value. This mapping is done by using the Alternate Account page.

If you map one account value to one or many alternate account values, you use the Account page. The mapping of one corporate (internal) account to many statutory alternate accounts is less common. In this scenario, ALTACCT level detail does not contain the basic elements of the transactions in support of detailed alternate account reporting.

You can also provide values for ACCOUNT to ALTACCT and ALTACCT to ACCOUNT suspense. The Journal Edit process uses these entries as the suspense account and alternate account if an Account or Altacct value that is used in a journal is not mapped to an alternate account or account. Suspense entries are errors that must be corrected. If you leave the suspense fields blank, the Journal Edit process also shows the line as an error that must be corrected.

Although you can map an account to multiple alternate accounts and also map an alternate account to multiple accounts, you enter transactions in a one-to-one relationship.

When you enter a transaction in the General Ledger or its feeder systems by using a primary Account ChartField, or corporate accounts, the system also enters the transaction to the alternate account.

Similarly, when you enter a transaction to the Alternate Account ChartField, statutory accounts, the system enters the transaction to the corporate or primary account ChartField.

You can override these values by selecting other values from prompt lists that display only mapped values.

Alternate account relationships can be different for various countries or local reporting entities using PeopleSoft setID functionality.

You can also designate an alternate account value as a Control Account to make certain that control account updates are generated only through system processes. This helps to ensure that the total of the detail that is in the various related feeder systems, such as Accounts Payable, Billing and Accounts Receivable, equals the total of the control account that is maintained by the feeder system for the general ledger.

You can do consolidations over alternate account when you designate alternate account as the anchor ChartField. This provides added flexibility for multinational companies that prepare consolidated statutory financial statements in compliance with local or government reporting requirements.

Alternate Account Mapping and SetID Sharing

You map a corporate chart of accounts to one or many statutory charts of accounts. For example, you could have one chart of accounts for each country or local office that requires statutory accounting and reporting. When you couple this with the ability to share setIDs, you have a very efficient solution.

One account value identified by a setID can be mapped to 1 or many alternate account values. In turn, 1 alternate account value identified by a setID can be mapped to 1 or many account values. However, any given account or alternate account can be a part of only 1 such mapping.

The following rules govern mapping:

• Within the same setID, an account can only be mapped once to an alternate account in the same setID. In turn, within the same setID an alternate account can only be mapped once to an account in the same setID.

• If you attempt to map a given account to an alternate account or map an alternate account to an account that is already mapped within the same setID, you receive an error message indicating that the account or alternate account is already mapped.

• Within a given setID, you can map an account to multiple alternate accounts as long as each alternate account is in a different setID; an alternate account that is within a given setID can be mapped to multiple accounts as long as each account is in a different setID.

Consider the following examples:

Example 1 - Account>AltAcct Mappings (Same SetID for Account and Alternate Account):

Mapping #3 is not valid because ALTACCT 101000 is already mapped in Mapping #1 within the same setID to ACCOUNT 100100.

Mapping #5 is not valid because ACCOUNT 140100 is already mapped in Mapping #4 within the same setID to ALTACCT 140000.

Example 2 - Account>AltAcct Mappings (Different SetIDs for Account and Alternate Account):

In Example 2, Mappings #1 and #2 have an ACCOUNT value mapped to several ALTACCT values having different setIDs.

Mapping #3a is not valid because the same ACCOUNT value in the same setID (101000 in CORP) is already a part of the one account to many alternate account mappings in Mapping #1.

Mapping #3b is not valid because the same ALTACCT value in the same setID (101003 in FRNC) is mapped to the same setID (CORP) for the account values.

Likewise, mapping #4 is not valid because the same ALTACCT value in the same setID (106001 in SPAN) is mapped to the same setID (CORP) for the account values.

Prompting for Account and Alternate Account and TableSet Sharing

To enable prompting for ACCOUNT and ALTACCT for a specific business unit, you must set up the appropriate setIDs for these prompts by creating tableset sharing definitions.

The following are examples of tableset sharing definitions for ACCOUNT and ALTACCT:

In the above table, each business unit that is defined by the set control value has access only to the designated setIDs for the specific business unit. For example, when you create a journal for Business Unit M60, the prompting on ACCOUNT and ALTACCT appears as CORP and FRNC, respectively. Business Unit M60 does not have access to any ACCOUNTS or ALTACCTS under any other setIDs.

Prerequisites

In order to use alternate accounts, the following prerequisites apply.

• If you plan to identify specific business units that may use alternate accounts, you must set up the general ledger business units first.

• If you plan to enable subsystem applications to use alternate accounts, you must associate the business unit for the application to a general ledger business unit that is also using the Alternate Account feature on the Ledgers For A Unit page.

See Also

Entering and Maintaining ChartField Values

Defining General Ledger Business Units

Enabling Alternate Accounts

To enable alternate accounts, use the Installation component (INSTALLATION) and the Ledgers For A Unit component (BUSINESS_UNIT_LED). Use the EM_BUS_UNIT_LED component interface to load data into the tables for the BUSINESS_UNIT_LED component.

This section discusses how to:

• Enable alternate account at the installation level.

• Enable alternate account at the ledger group and business unit level.

Pages Used to Enable Alternate Account

Enabling Alternate Account at the Installation Level

Access the Installation Options - Overall page.

To enable alternate account at the installation level select the Enable Alternate Account check box. When you click this check box, pages and views in the various applications show alternate account related fields and enable dynamic prompting. In addition, journal generator creates journal entries at a minimum level of ACCOUNT and ALTACCT.

If you do not select this check box, the various products do not display alternate account fields and prompt lists, and journal generator only creates journal entries at a minimum level of ACCOUNT.

Enabling Alternate Account at the Ledger Group and Business Unit Level

Access the Ledgers For A Unit - Definition page.

To enable alternate accounts at the business unit and ledger group level:

1. Select a business unit that requires the use of alternate accounts.

2. Select the Enable Alternate Accounts check box for each detail ledger group that might require the use of alternate accounts. The Acct > Alt Suspense and Alt > Acct Suspense fields become available for entry. Typically suspense accounts hold offsetting values to ensure balanced ledgers and journals. You must later return to these suspense accounts to correct the distribution.

3. Select the alternate suspense account for the first field and the account suspense account for the second field.

Note. If you select the Enable Alternate Account check box but do not define a mapping option for the alternate account on the Account or Alternate Account page, the system uses the suspense account that you define on the Ledgers For A Unit - Definition page.

See Also

Defining Ledgers for a Business Unit

Adding and Mapping Accounts and Alternate Accounts

To add and map accounts and alternate accounts, use the Account component (GL_ACCOUNT) and the Alternate Account component (ALTACCT). Use the ACCOUNT_CF component interface and the ALTACCT_CF component interface to load data into the tables for these components.

Add or updated on the one side of the one to many relation. For example, to map one account to many alternate accounts, enter the mappings using the GL_ACCOUNT (Account) component.

This section discusses how to:

• Add and map alternate accounts to accounts.

• Add and map accounts to alternate accounts.

Pages Used to Add or Map Alternate Accounts

Adding and Mapping Alternate Accounts to Accounts

Access the Map to Account page.

Account SetID	If any accounts are already mapped to this alternate account, the setID of the account displaying in the Mapped Accounts scroll area appears in the Account SetID field. Click the Add a New Row button to select another account setID. This enables the Account field that is in the Mapped Accounts region. You can then select an account for the selected setID to map to this alternate account. If you click the Add a New Row button in the Mapped Accounts grid, you can map a second account by using the same setID as the first account.
Add Account	Click this link to add a new account to the chart of accounts that does not exist for the selected setID. This takes you to the Account ChartField definition page, where you enter the information for the new account and select apply. You return to the Map to Account page where you can now select the setID and new account to add to the page.
Mapping Mode	One of the following options is not selected by the system until you link the account value with one or more alternate account values or you link one alternate account value to more than one accounts. If One Account to One or Many Altaccts. One Altacct to One or Many Accounts. You must specify a default alternate account before you can save this page.
Mapped Accounts	Scroll to enter the accounts from the selected setID that you want to map or link to this alternate account. Later, when you enter an alternate account value as part of a transaction, you can use only the account values that you define in this scroll. The Mapping Mode check box that you select determines the relationship of these ChartFields. The selections on opposing mapping pages for alternate account and account are grayed to prevent many-to-many relationships
Default Account	Select an account in the scroll to enable the system to use that account as the default account on transaction entry pages. The system uses this account during processing for a particular alternate account. If you enter the alternate account first on the journal line, the analytical account appears by default based on the value that you specify on this page. You must specify a default account before you can save the page.

Adding and Mapping Accounts to Alternate Accounts

Access the Map to Alternate Account page.

Use this page to map the one account value to one or more alternate account values or to map the account value to only one alternate account. This page works like the Alternate Account - Map to Account page that is described previously. The difference is that you map an account to one or more alternate accounts by using this page, while on the previous alternate account page you map an alternate account to one or more accounts.

See Also

Adding and Mapping Alternate Accounts to Accounts