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Text File | 1979-12-31 | 13KB | 318 lines

          BudgeTrak Departmental Accounting User Manual

                       MS/DOS Version 1.21
                     Copyright 1986
                          by
             Software Associates Laboratories
                   1747 N. Valencia
               San Bernardino, CA 92404








The BudgeTrak system may be copied and distributed freely. It may
not be sold for profit other than by its developer. Several file
maintenance programs, not effecting initial use,  are furnished when
you register as a user with a $49 donation. These programs are
necessary to recover files if data is corrupted by power failures etc.,
are required also to establish your 2nd and following fiscal years.
These special, infrequently used programs are furnished on 2 copy
protected floppies. One of these is a backup. Two of our frequently
used programs remind of and help with your registration.

Software Associates Laboratories makes no warranty regarding the
reliability or effectiveness of the system. Great care, however has
gone into its development.


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         BudgeTrak Departmental Accounting System            1


Encumberance Accounting Explained

This system was developed to allow a single department within a
large organization to get and keep an accurate picture of it's
budgeted spending. Our experience was that the department budget
was always worked out at the beginning of the fiscal year. Ours,
like most large organizations has a large sophisticated, ponderous
General Ledger system that is posted on a daily schedule and
produces a monthly report reflecting how the department is doing
against the budgeted plan. It even gives us the ability to inquire
at the terminal to see the various Center/Chart of Account balances.
According to our accountants, this should be sufficient to know if
we have any slack to manage in the various accounts.

Well, it isn't. Any department that has any volume of descretionary
spending can have quite a number of approved expenditures "in the
pipeline" awaiting the "requisition/purchase order/payables/posting"
routines, that have NOT hit your accounts when you are wondering
what you have left in a particular account. If your payables stretch
out due to tight money, it gets worse.

The more dynamic the department is in it's operation, with a higher
percentage of descretionary expenses, (travel etc.) the more
critical that the manager have day to day accuracy of what has been
spent against the plan or budget.

So, many of our departments have someone posting expenditures into
manual journals as well as sending them on to central accounting.
This person then keeps running totals on the accounts so he can
answer the question, "How much is left in the training account etc.?"
Other departments simply "play it by ear", until the last 90 days of
the fiscal year and then spend days on end trying to get a clear
picture of their accounts, spending heavily at year end. It would
have made much better sense to have spent the funds more steadily
throughout the year.

Now, we know it shouldn't work this way when you have high priced
central computers, software and accountants. Since the extra effort
is being used anyway with less than satisfactory results, we decided
to build a system that would run locally and be current at all times.
It includes "Encumberance Accounting". This is sometimes, (not
usually) a feature of the central accounting General Ledger.è
The way it works is that any expenditure may be entered as an
ESTIMATE or ENCUMBERANCE instead as an ACTUAL. This estimate is
stored in a separate balance field. Then at a later time, when the
Actual expenditure is known it is entered by changing the Estimate
to an Actual. The Encumbered balance is reduced and the Actual
balance is increased. So--- the original estimate immediately
reduced the Budget by the amount you guessed the expenditure  would
be, when you first mentally spent the money. The Actual merely
"fine tunes" the entry to make the books balance. So the budget
is 99% accurate weeks ahead of the Actual getting posted to your
central system and more days ahead of your monthly G/L report
getting run and delivered to you.








         BudgeTrak Departmental Accounting System            2


Here's how BudgeTrak works:

    1. You set up all your department Chart of Accounts on the
       system Master file. It accommodates 2 digits for the
       "Company" (your primary dept., for instance), 7 digits
       for the Responsibility Centers (sub-departments) and 6
       digits for the Chart of Account. (Most micro software is
       not handling full size fields like this, that's one of
       the reasons we decided to write the system. The other is
       that we wanted Encumberance accounting!)

       The system will handle up to 999 Master recds.

       For simplicity, each month's transactions are stored on
       an individual file that can contain 1200 transactions.
       If you go over that amount in any month, you can
       initialize extra files for the month (up to a total of 9
       files in any 1 month).

    2. You choose Single or Double Entry accounting for your
       system. Most departmental systems will use the simpler
       Single entry approach. (The system is a very "friendly"
       Double entry system, insisting on an offsetting trans-
       action for any Actual transaction that is posted. It
       furnishes your choice of up to 3 offsetting Company/
       Center/Chart of Account master records automatically
       to both compose the offsetting transaction and to
       post it. The system anticipates the various data
       entry and posting functions as you enter transactions).

    3. As you process any expenditure, you enter it as an è       estimate. It posts instantly to the account, adjusting
       the Budget, Actual, Encumberance (Estimated) and
       Variance to Budget balances.

    4. During the month you can look up account balances at
       any time instantly. You may print a report of the
       transactions entered to that point for the month. The
       report is sorted and summarized by Company, Department
       and Grand total. You may get this report for any prev-
       ious month also. Separate Estimated and Actual, Debit
       and Credit totals are furnished for easy reconcillation.

       This report is sorted by date of entry within Center
       and Chart of Account combination and carries the
       actual transaction record number. When revising an
       Estimated transaction, you may first locate it on this
       report and enter this record number for instant lookup.

    5. At any time you may get a 12 month Spread sheet report
       that summarizes as above and also "cross foots" to give
       you the annual totals for each Center/Chart of Account
       combination and summarized balance lines. Five balances
       are maintained throughout. Budget (or Plan), Encumberance,
       Actual, Variance and YTD Variance for each monthly
       column and the annual cross footed right hand column.







         BudgeTrak Departmental Accounting System            3



    6. When the monthly, central G/L departmental report arrives
       you simply run thru the transactions, quickly changing
       estimated entry amounts to the actual amounts, revising
       some of the descriptions if you wish (adding invoice nos
       etc.). Get a new spread sheet if desired. The 12 month
       spread sheet prints using "condensed type" on a dot
       matrix printer and drops the cents so it can stay on an
       8 1/2 inch page. If you want precision to the penny,
       you may run a similar 3 month spread sheet that gives
       you any 3 month period of the year in the same format.

The Chart of Accounts may be viewed at the terminal. Each account
shows  the  12  month picture for that account in  4  dimensions,
Plan,  Encumberance,  Actual  and  Variance in full  dollars  and
cents for each month and also totals for the year.  A  report is
furnished that lists all Chart  of  Accounts showing  the plan
and the year-to-date variance for each  account with totals for èall accounts.

A special program, BUDPASWD is furnished that allows you to set
up passwords to access all the programs. A control person should
have access to this program and use it to enter all the initial
passwords that are required. Each terminal user should have their
own password. BUDPASWD encrypts the password and stores it on a
file "BUDPASS". Each password is tied to a particular system ID
code (a 2 char. alpha code that identifies the set of accounts
you are tracking). If you have more than one system on your PC
you will need separate passwords. This allows privacy between
systems.

Any user that owns a password may change his password, at any
time a program requests a password, by entering CHANG. They
will then be asked for their existing password and if they
respond correctly, will be given the opportunity to enter their
new choice of a password. Periodic changes are suggested for
greater security and privacy. The system comes to you with the
BUDPASS file furnished and the password DDEMO installed for your
initial use with the ID code "DD" for the test files that come
with the initial copies of the programs. If you have difficulty
getting through the password routine, you may install your own
password and system ID code using the program BUDPASWD. You
may also de-activate the password function using BUDPASWD. After
you are into it you should change DDEMO to something else.

The program BUDPASWD should be on a separate floppy diskette,
locked away from non-control use.

System Installation:

Your first step in installing a system is to run program
BUDPASWD and either establish your password/system ID code or
de-activate the password function as described above.

At  this  point  the system includes these  programs  with  these
functions:







         BudgeTrak Departmental Accounting System            4

Brief Program Descriptions:

BUDG     This is a Menu showing all programs in the system.

BINT    This program initializes all system files and updates the
    Control file. It also copys existing files for  enlargement.è
BMST    Maintains the Master file of accounts. Displays monthly
    balances and yearly totals. Prints report of accounts.

BTRN    Enters transactions and posts to the accounts. Revises from
    Estimated to Actual entries.

BSRT    Sorts the monthly transaction file ahead of printing the
    detail transaction report. Also sorts the initial Master
    file before any updating action.

BPRN     Prints the summarized monthly transaction detail report.

BSPR    Prints the 12 month spread sheet, summarized showing 4
    dimensions of the balances at 3 levels of summarization.

B3MO    Prints a similar 3 month spread sheet with full dollars
    and cents. Any 3 months of the year.

-----------------------Utility Programs-------------------------
BBAL    Allows you to obtain balances from the Transaction files
        to compare with Master file balances. Balances at any
        of the summarized levels. Allows reset of first vacant
        recd in header recds of Transaction and Master file.

BCON    Converts Release 1.1 Transaction files to run under
        Release 1.2 which supports a longer transaction record.

BCPY**    Copies the old Master to a new file at year end, zeroing
    all balance fields for the start of the new year. Allows
    for file enlargement if required.

BCOV**    Used to recover a Master file that has experienced maint-
    enance difficulties.

BZAP**    Used to enter transaction data without effecting the
    balances or to adjust balances. Available if severe maint-
    enance problems require.

BORG**    Re-creates the 2 index files for random access to the
    Master records. Required if the index files are
    corrupted due to power failures, improper shut-downs etc.
    If larger Master file is needed.

**    These programs are shipped on copy protected disks(1 for
    your backup), upon registration.

BUDPASWD Initializes the password file, BUDPASS, and allows entry
    of the various passwords, the owner name and the authorized
    accounting system ID for that user. May also de-activate
    the password function.
End of document.