System Narrative
The TRAK 5 General Ledger System provides the capabilities needed by management to exercise effective financial control within a company.
The system facilitates realistic planning and budgeting. During the year, actual results are compared to a company’s plans in a timely manner. In this way, management always has an accurate view of the company’s performance. As a result, executives are able to respond quickly to changing conditions, take advantage of opportunities, and successfully analyze and resolve problems.
The system is designed to meet the diverse requirements of many industries and to respond quickly to the changing needs of companies. Emphasis has been placed on making it easy to implement, add new companies, add and change reports, alter accounting policy and make organizational changes.
General Ledger Features
The General Ledger System provides a broad range of capabilities for maintaining a detailed financial data base and producing extensive management and accounting reports. The features provided by General Ledger are:
Numerous companies, each with its own options, chart of accounts, reports and accounting cycles, can reside on the same file.
Controls set up for one company can be shared by another company. Controls are divided into logical groups so a company can share some controls while maintaining others separately.
A wide variety of data validation options is provided to enable each company to set up the system in a way that is most effective.
Every effort has been made to minimize the amount of work required to enter, correct or change financial data and system controls.
The system offers maximum flexibility in the timing of posting and closing. A Trial Post option provides for tentative posting and reports. Closing can be repeated—the system determines the net change to earnings. In particular, the system offers maximum flexibility to adjust, re-close and report year-end results without disrupting processing for the new year.
A number of capabilities are provided to aid in the preparation of budgets. Both fixed and variable budgets can be used. Responsibility reports compare budgeted amounts to actual results.
All types of account balances can be allocated among a variety of entities such as cost centers or product lines. The system’s powerful Allocation module makes it practical to do extensive allocations with a minimal amount of work.
A comprehensive set of reports provides a complete audit trail of all data through the system and monitors accounts for any unusual conditions. These reports can be requested, generated and viewed while remaining in the online environment.
The Statement Analysis Reporting (Star) module that TRAK 5 provides is an extremely powerful user-oriented report writer enabling users to create their own financial statements and management reports. Because of its unique features for access to the General Ledger data base, Star is well suited for producing both financial statements and ad hoc analytical reports. These reports can be edited, requested and viewed from the online environment.
Consolidated reports can be produced taking into consideration inter-company elimination. Companies with different Charts of Accounts can be consolidated using a master chart of accounts.
The system handles foreign currency conversion and reporting in accordance with FASB-52.
Amounts summarized by the system can be transmitted to personal computers for further analysis using popular spread sheet and graphics programs.
The data base is structured so accounts can have differing amounts of data without wasting file space. In addition, inactive data is not passed unnecessarily.
The Automatic Interface Module (AIM) that TRAK 5 provides enables a company to easily interface with other financial systems, whether written in-house or a purchased package. In this way, a company need not be locked into a single software vendor or replace existing systems.
A minimal amount of effort is needed to specify Charts of Accounts, reporting structures and report definitions. As a result, the system can be installed in substantially less than the customary amount of time.
A fundamental design feature is the system’s ability to handle changes in organization, chart of accounts, input formats and reporting requirements—all with minimum user effort.
The Security system that TRAK 5 provides allows you to restrict the online functions to authorized users. This is done by establishing levels of authorization and assigning task identifiers to users of the online system.