GL Interface


	Detailed Description

Defining the Chart of Accounts (General Ledger Interface)

This is a major differentiator of CentreBill against many other billing systems currently in the market. Only very expensive billing systems typically have a fully functional General Ledger interface which enables reconciliation between the billing system and the accounting system.

Please note that the GL interface is a highly complex (and robust) function. Any and all financial transactions performed in CentreBill touch the GL interface and thus affect the company's accounting system. A full description of the GL interface is available – this also includes the business rules associated with this functionality.

The description below is a very brief overview of the basic concepts behind the GL interface.

In keeping with generally accepted accounting principles, CentreBill's interface to the accounting system is based on a batch operation. This ensures two things:

The administrator (the person managing the financial matters for the company) of the system has full control over the timing of the reconciliation process (see the section Manage GL under Admin)

Should for some reason the batch interface process be unsuccessful, the system may be rolled back to the last known successful export thus making problem analysis and resolution a lot more manageable. Should each transaction be automatically interfaced to the accounting system, this would make it extremely difficult to roll back to a good known state.

Two main functions exist when defining the GL Interface:

Defining the Chart of Accounts

Defining the Company Defaults

Defining the Chart of Accounts

Once again, two main considerations need to be addressed:

Define each of the Income codes associated with each of the groups of services and products supplied by the company. The chart of accounts may be as complex or as simple as desired. However, every entry shown in CentreBill must be present in the accounting system

Defining certain assets and liabilities in the chart of accounts which ensures that all financial transactions within CentreBill are integrated into the accounting system

The screen below shows a chart of accounts configured for a typical ISP.

For each of the accounts added, the following parameters must be defined:

GL Code – this is the general ledger code as defined in the accounting system and may be any alphanumeric string. However, it must match what is in the accounting system

Description – this is used for information purposes only

Category – this determines whether the account is an asset, a liability or an income account

GL Tax Code – this is configured from a predefined drop down list which would have been created specifically to meet the requirements of the accounting system

Defining Company Defaults

In order to effectively interface a billing system to an accounting system, the following parameters must be defined in the billing system. (It is assumed that the accounting system has the capabilities to enable interfacing to external systems and that the person in charge of this configuration fully understands the principles associated with interfacing two systems).

The parameters below address the minimum requirements for the GL interface. The values associated with each of the parameters are selected from the previously defined chart of accounts as per the previous screen.

Bank – this is the account into which all payments collected will be deposited. It may be the company's actual bank account (in the case that CentreBill is the only debtors control system being used), or it may be an interim account as defined in the accounting system

Bank Deposit Clearing – this is a clearing account for all deposits and may be the same as the bank account defined above

Refund Clearing – any refunds made to customers will need to be paid out if the accounting system. The Refund Clearing account tracks these transactions

Unearned Income – this is income received in advance for services yet to be delivered. An example may include prepayment for domain and/or Web hosting for an annual subscription. CentreBill manages full amortization of prepaid accounts

Early Termination Fees – should the company charge fees for a customer breaking a contract early, then the income associated with these fees may be pasted to this account

GST Payable – this is the account where all tax on a service or product sold will be posted to

Debtors/Receivables – this is the main receivables account and will reflect the amount owing to the company by its customers at any one time

Uninvoiced Charges – where a charge for a service or product has been raised, but which still needs to be posted to an invoice, the amount of the charge will be reflected in the Uninvoiced Charges account until it is posted to an invoice. This is specifically useful where charges are accumulated for work executed between two billing periods and where the company does not wish to raise ad hoc invoices but wishes to rather post all charges to the invoice raised at the automatic invoice run time thus ensuring the customer receives one bill per month only

Unbanked Receipts/Payments –payments which have been collected but not yet banked (e.g. check payments and credit card payments made into a merchant account which has not yet been posted to the company's bank account) will be posted to this account

CentreBill Clearing – this is a general clearing account

Default Income – should for some reason a charge not have a GL code assigned to it, then the Default Income account will be a catch all account so as not to lose the income in the export to the accounting system. This account should never have to be used in a properly configured system.

Bad Debt – this account may be used for writing off debt owing to the company which will never be collected

Sales Credit Default – should a sales credit be raised for a service of product previously invoiced, then the admin manager may either post the sales credit to the original income account or post it to the Sales Credit Default account

Should additional default accounts be required, these could be engineered into CentreBill with little effort.