Preparing to use the General Ledger Setup Wizard
| □ | If you are about to read this chapter: |
| • | Incorporating the General Ledger Accounts defined for the new MKMS General Ledger System, a Chart of Accounts should also have been designed by an in-house person in charge of your General Ledger (or the Company's Accountant) and General Ledger Groups - used to further sub-divide the Financial Transactions of the five basic Types of Accounts into smaller and more precisely defined sub-groups - should have been employed as that Chart of Accounts was created. |
| • | Therefore it will incorporate each of the five transaction Account Types and these will have been assigned Account Numbers using the numbering range shown below. |
Account Type Number Range
| 2. | Liabilities 2000 to 2999 |
| ◆ | The General Ledger Account Numbers 9990 - 9998 are used (internally) by the system and therefore should not be defined by the User. |
| • | Assuming that these requirements have been met, there are specific Pre-Setup Tasks that must be completed before you actually run the General Ledger Setup Wizard. |
| • | Each of these Pre-Setup Tasks are listed below. |
| • | These should be completed in the order presented. |
| □ | Create a Trial Balance using the existing (old) system's General Ledger Balances. |
| • | The in-house person in charge of your General Ledger, or the Company's Accountant, must create a Trial Balance on paper (or a printed one, using your existing accounting software) reporting the most recent month that has been finalized ("closed") using the corresponding Account Numbers defined for the new MKMS General Ledger's Chart of Accounts. |
| • | If you are using a Printed Trial Balance from your old accounting software, and there are differences in those Account Numbers or Titles (the account names) from the ones that you created in the new Chart of Accounts, make a note of these new Account Numbers or Titles on the old system's Trial Balance Report. |
| ◆ | See the "Trial Balance Report" chapter for additional information about about the Trial Balance format. |
| □ | Create Financial Statements - These will be used as a double-check process after the Setup is finalized: |
| • | Create the Profit & Loss Statement (some accountants use the term "Income Statement") |
| • | Create a Balance Sheet on paper (or a printed one, using your existing accounting software) |
| • | This should be for the most recent Closed Month - the latest one that has been finalized ("closed") |
| • | Make a Note of any Account Number or Title changes that will be different in the MKMS system.. |
| □ | Close those months in MKMS - |
| • | Be sure that the most recent Closed Month used for the Financial Statements that were created in the step above, are also Closed (along with all prior months) in both the MKMS Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable modules. |
An Overview of the required General Ledger Setup Wizard preparations
| □ | The General Ledger Setup Wizard will walk you through the Setup process, generally checking along the way on the accuracy of your entries. |
| • | If you plan on doing Multi-Departmental Accounting, be sure that you have defined those Departments. |
| • | Generally, the ending date of the most recently closed month in your General Ledger is not "Today". |
| • | So, you will use the MKMS Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable modules to produce Reports with the financial transaction information required to bring your MKMS General Ledger up to Today. |
| • | From these Reports, you will be able to produce a summary of the amounts that must be entered into the MKMS General Ledger System to get the system's General Ledger financial transactions accurately posted up to "Today". |
| • | Ideally, as noted above, the most recently closed month in your existing General Ledger (whether manual or in another accounting package), and in the MKMS Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable modules - is the same month. |
| • | But if this is not the case (and it usually isn't), and you are using another accounting software package, you may want to consider bringing that system's General Ledger balances up to "last" month, and closing those periods, before continuing. |
| • | If this is your decision, you may continue to use MKMS until you are ready to proceed. |
| • | Then, you will want to Stop entering financial transaction in MKMS at that time, and enter your existing General Ledger balances. |
| • | However, should this not be possible, or you're using a hand written system and have determined it would require too much time to do so, the method we will describe below will still work, it will just take a little longer and be a bit more time consuming to complete. |
| □ | A Little Cleanup - If you will not be able to get all the months Closed in your current General Ledger, just complete as many as possible, then be sure that those same months are closed in the Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable modules within MKMS. |
| □ | For those who will not be able to get their existing General Ledger Closed up until "last month", meaning more than one previous month is still "open" (and also meaning that you have not yet performed the Close Month process on those months in MKMS): |
| • | This should be the month immediately following the month that you closed in your current (old) General Ledger. |
| • | Save each of these sets of reports separately. |
| • | Repeat this process for each month (Close, Print, Save), one at a time, until the most recently closed month in the Accounts Receivable & Accounts Payable module is "last" month. |
| • | Stop Closing and Printing when you have closed and printed the reports for the most recently completed month. |
| • | The current month should remain open, but be sure to print the recommended reports for this open month when told to do so, below. |
| • | Assemble all of these Reports on a month by month basis (you should have all of the monthly reports except the current month's reports finished), then continue below. |
| □ | Before running the General Ledger Setup Wizard: |
| • | Monitoring operations are unaffected, and should continue. |
| • | Do not close the current month. |
| • | Assemble all of your Reports on a month by month basis (you should now have all of the monthly, and the current month's, reports finished), then continue below. |
