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Balancing Cash to County

This document discusses procedures for balancing your cash accounts to your county's cash balance for your district. This process normally occurs on a monthly basis, prior to monthly reporting. Balancing cash would also be an important process before beginning year-end procedures. Your cash should be in balance prior to rolling over your beginning balances to your new fiscal year.

Overview

Balancing cash in Escape is done with the Standard Fund/Object Detail Report. This FYI covers the necessary setup for the journal entries and how to list journal entries to produce the Fund/Object Detail Report. Once you have run the report for the same reporting period as the county's report, you can use it to compare and reconcile your cash.

Below are the steps to set up the Journal Entry types in order to report only the entries you need for balancing cash with your county. The steps are described in detail on the following pages.

1. Set up the Stores Interfund journal entry type.
2. Set up the Expend journal entry type.
3. Set up the SOURCE field on all journal entry types.
4. List journal entries to run the Fund/Object Detail Report.
5. Use the report to balance your cash to the county's cash.

Journal Entry Type Setup Requirements

Your system manager can access the Journal Entry Type Setup screen through the System Manager Module by selecting Module Setup and then Journal Entry Setup (Proc#7002). Journal Entry Setup can also be accessed through the Ledger module (Proc#7002).

Step 1 - Set up the Stores Interfund Journal Entry Type

Through Journal Entry Setup, edit the Stores Interfund journal entry type and set the JOURNAL ENTRY GROUP OPTION field to a "T". Grouping by "T" will cause the Stores Interfund journals to be summarized by transaction date. If this option is not set with a "T", a separate line will print for each Stores Interfund transaction making balancing more difficult.

Step 2 - Set up the Expend & Receipt Journal Entry Type

Through Journal Entry Setup, edit the Expend & Receipt journal type and set the JOURNAL ENTRY GROUP OPTION field to a "blank". When the JOURNAL ENTRY GROUP OPTION field is left blank in the Expend & Receipts journal entry type, it causes those journals to be summarized by batch #. In the Expend journal entry, batch # is the warrant register number. This will make the report list only one amount for each warrant run and each deposit batch.

Step 3 - Set up the SOURCE Field on all Journal Entry Types

If your district is not using the SOURCE field for another purpose, you might want to assign all journal types that you want to be included when balancing cash to have a source of "CASH". Then, when you are creating your list of journal entries, you can filter on the SOURCE field and limit the journals to include only those journals with a particular source. Plus, when using the standard Fund/Object Detail Report, the SOURCE field can be used to summarize all journals with the same source by transaction date.

TIP: Journal Entries record the SOURCE as they are entered, if SOURCE is changed on a Journal Entry Type, you will only be able to report that SOURCE from that date forward. In other words, the change is not retroactive. If you change a SOURCE this month to CASH on a JE Type, you will not be able to run a list using SOURCE of CASH for that JE type for last month.

If you can not use the SOURCE field to designate the entries as CASH journals, then see Step 4 for other options when filling in the SOURCE field to produce the Fund/Object Detail Report.

Through Journal Entry Setup, edit the SOURCE field for each journal entry type by using the F8 key to edit and scroll through the journal entry types. Here is a sample of what a journal entry type list might look like using this method. Notice that "CASH" has been assigned to the SOURCE field to group cash journal entries for the district:

Step 4 - List Journal Entries to Run Fund/Object Detail Report

1. Sign into the AP Module or the Ledger Module.
2. Go to the Journal Entries menu choice, next select Review Journals or Select Journals.
3. In the Select or Sort/Select pulldown, choose Trans Date Range and fill in the appropriate date range. Press F10.
4. Now choose Source and enter CASH in the first Source field. Press F3 to begin searching.

NOTE: If you haven't created CASH Sources in your journal entry type setup records as described in the Step 3 of this FYI, you may want to exclude some JE types, i.e. ENCUMBER, BUDADOPT, etc. You can include or exclude using the Select or Reject option.

5. Once you have a list of journal entries on the screen, go to the File pulldown and choose the Reports subbox or the Fund/Object Detail Report (Proc# 116).
6. Once you have selected the Fund/Object Detail Report, enter the desired range of funds or leave blank for all funds. Enter the cash account object code (9110). If you have a SACS account structure and you want to run the report by resource, enter a "Y" in BREAK ON RESOURCE. You can press F3 at this point, unless you want to change any of the remaining defaults.
7. The resulting report will list transactions by date and batch number and can be used for the reconciliation of your cash.

TIP: Your System Manager can build a menu selection and stack the choices necessary to print this report. For example, the menu choice could be named "County Cash Report". The procedure would be 108 and the parameter would be #112#120#116.

This menu choice, when selected, will prompt you for transaction date range -- enter the data range you wish to report on and then press F10. Then, you will see the Source/Type prompt, fill in SOURCE with "CASH" and press F10. The searching for the journal entries begins and completes with a list on your screen. Immediately after the search is complete, the dialog box for Fund/Object Detail Report will appear, fill in the fund range, the object code for cash, whether you wish to break on resource (SACS districts) and whether you want a summary or detail report. Press F3 and the report will be created.

Step 5 - Use the Report to Balance Your Cash to the County's Cash

You can now use the report you produced in Step 4 to reconcile with the county books, just as you balance your own checkbook with your bank statement.

1. Check for outstanding items from last month's reconciliation. These are items that were posted to Escape during the previous month, but not posted to the county during that period. Or, these items were posted to the county, but not posted to Escape as of the closing of the period.
2. Stores Warehouse journal entries are summarized by the date based on how you set up the journal entry type during Step 1. When you report stores journals to the county, you may want to make your entries on the county system in a format where your comments include the dates that were compiled to create the entry. In order to reconcile, you will need to add together all Escape entries for the date range the county JE is made up of.
3. It is helpful to enter the county's reference or document number into the comment field when entering county journal entries into Escape.
4. If the county prints your checks for you, remember that you have set up Escape to summarize your warrants by batch number. Does your county suspend items? If so, note which items have been suspended and are not yet paid in the county. Also, depending on whether your county holds individual warrants or entire warrant batches when suspending an item, you may find it useful to keep that information available for balancing.
5. Some districts use cut-off dates to process their last checks or cash journals to make monthly balancing easier. For instance, a district might not cut checks past the 25th day of a month to insure that there is catch up time for the county to get everything posted for the current month.
6. Have all the checks that the county has stale-dated posted to Escape in the same period the county posted them into the county system?
7. Set up a procedure for making sure cancellations and voids are reported to the county in the same period they are entered into Escape.

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