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Staying in Balance by Resource

This FYI discusses the requirement of SACS to have funds balanced between resources. It gives you helpful hints on how Escape features can be used to keep your system in balance by Resource.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This FYI assumes that your system is in balance overall! If you are not sure if it is, please contact Escape Customer Care for help. There are utilities and other tools that can be run to diagnose and repair system or balance problems that may have occurred due to network or power problems.

Overview

The State of California implemented the SACS accounting structure so that it could provide the required reporting to the Federal Government and other agencies that provide funding for California schools. To be able to provide these statistics, SACS requires that all funds be balanced by resource. This enables the State to:

  • Track activities funded with revenues that have financial reporting requirements (i.e., class size reduction)
  • Track activities funded with revenues that have restrictions on how funds are to be spent (i.e., Title I)
  • Differentiate between unrestricted and restricted resources

Escape Technology provides the tools you need to meet the requirement that your financial system balance by resource. Since the introduction of SACS, we have added features that make it easy to keep your system in balance.

Balancing by Resource

The easiest way to determine if your system is in balance by resource is to run the Balance Sheet Report in the Chart module.

Balance Sheet Report

This report requires that all users be out of the system. It can also take hours to run. So, you may want to run this report after-hours. The following is a typical setup for running the report.

  • In the REPORT SETUP field, enter the name of the file where the report settings will be saved. Press F9 to save the report setup for access later. (This file is necessary to run this report after-hours. See FYI Batch Processing Reports for more information.)
  • Set the Page Break On field to F (fund)
  • Set the Include Zero Balance field to Y
  • Set the Current Balance Only field to Y
  • All other options on dialogue should be blank

Print the Balance Sheet Report.

Cash Account Report

From the Chart module, run your Report Writer report for all cash accounts in resource order and print the actual balances. This is a simple report that lists account #, description and account balances.

Here is a link to a basic account report (CASHRPT.RCF) that you can save into \ESCAPE\REPORT and your System Manager can add to your report list. You must check the REPORT FORMAT field in the report to ensure that it is using the appropriate report format for SACS account reporting. Cash Account by Resource

Compare the Reports

Now, compare the figures of each report for each resource. If the figures do not match, then your system is out of balance, and you will want to go to the next section of this FYI to get your system back into balance. If all of the figures match, then you are in balance and will want to read the last section of this FYI to make sure that you stay in balance.

Correcting an Out-of-Balance Resource

There is only one way to put your system back in balance. You need to create a journal entry that balances the cash resources. This journal entry must not have the AUTO BALANCE FLAG set to Y.

To do this, create a manual journal entry to cash for each resource using the Balance Sheet report. To calculate the entry for cash, you should:

  • Balance Sheet $ Amt minus Actual Acct Balance = Adjustment Amt for JE
  • If the result is positive - then you debit
  • If the result is negative, then you credit

Examples: 

         
  3,400,000   Bal Sheet Amt
(-3,100,000)  Actual Bal
  6,500,000   debit


 -1,100,000   Bal Sheet Amt
 -(-750,000)  Actual Bal
   -350,000   credit

Post all of the journal entries and repeat the steps necessary in the balance resource section of the FYI to ensure that your system is now in balance.

Staying in Balance

Escape can help you stay in balance by automating many of the activities that could cause a system to become out of balance.

Journal Entries

Escape has implemented a new field in the Journal Entry Setup screen in the System Manager module.

The Automatically Balance JE flag balances manual journal entries by resource upon saving and posting. This flag works in conjunction with the JE Functionality flag. Detailed information about setting up journal entries is found in the FYI Setting Up Journal Entries.

Accounts

Another way to ensure that your system is SACS compliant is to make sure that only valid SACS accounts are created. In the Account Structure Setup screen, set the SACS COMPONENT VALIDATION flag with a W or an R:

  • W warns users if they are entering an account with invalid components.
  • R stops users from creating or changing an account to use an invalid combination.

This field automatically validates accounts and component combinations using the SACS component matrixes provided by the California State Department of Education.