Changing Chart of Accounts/GLs

Good morning Chandra Asken. I don't normally follow the finance forum, but a colleague of mine from Finance flagged this post with me as switching over all our GL accounts is something I did about 18 months ago.

I am sure it depends a little bit about your setup...but here are some of the things we did.

• Our fiscal year runs April 1 - March 31, and we wanted the new accounts to be used at the start of our new fiscal. So we planned as of about 10 PM on March 31, to turn everything 'off' like TNEW, make sure all our batches were closed and posted, etc...
• Before this point, I had setup all the new accounts and had them ready to go.
• Once everything was posted and complete, I switched all our different performances, campaigns, etc... to the new GL codes. We timed it this this way because, for example, we had already been selling performances from April 1 onwards...and on March 31, that revenue was being saved in the old account, but as of April 1, the revenue needed to start recording in the new account.  Of note, we don't use price events...but I did wonder if when using price events, a new GL can be set...and therefore I could have 'programmed' this to happen...but alas, we just went the manual route.
• Then, after midnight, I did things like On Account, Gift Certificates, and Invoices.  This got a little complex and took me a bunch of testing to get it right.  Essentially though, I created two 'dummy forms of payment': one 'NEW GL FOP' and one 'OLD GL FOP'.  Then, I would attach the old 'On Account' GL to the 'OLD GL FOP' and then the new 'On Account' GL to the 'NEW GL FOP'.  Open up a batch and then in an order, I would 'pay-positive' the total amount sitting in the old account so that the actual GL account would come to 0. Then, I would offset that payment with the 'NEW GL FOP' and hence moving the money into the new GL.  For example, say I had $1050 revenue in an old account...
  • Setup the old GL to the OLD GL FOP and then the new GL to the NEW GL FOP (make sure these are right!!!)
  • Open a new order (probably a good thing to track these in whatever way is best for you)
  • Go directly to payments.
  • Apply a 'pay-positive' payment of $1050 using OLD GL FOP
  • Apply a 'refund-negative' payment of $1050 using NEW GL FOP
  • This balances the order, and click Finish/Done.
  • Close and post your batch 
  • Check the GL report for that day and make sure that the old GL account is at $0 and the new GL account is at $1050
  • Repeat over and over.  (I did this process for every single switch so that I could track it carefully)
  • Finally, be super aware that sometimes the 'refund' vs. 'positive' payment can switch!!!  There is obviously a difference between a revenue account vs. something like a gift certificate that is really just storing/deferring revenue.
• At the end, when you think you are done, run your GL report again, make sure it looks perfect, and save it in your files.  Just in case you need to look back if something seems off down the road.

Overall, this post important thing is to TEST TEST TEST in your test environment to get a hang of this.  I wish I had tested a little bit more as I made a few small errors that could have been avoidable.

Finally, not sure if you came accros this, but it is helpful and probably explains way better than I did, about how to move money from an old (incorrect) GL account to a new (correct) GL account. https://www.tessituranetwork.com/knowledgebase/Content/Finance_and_Batch_Administration/Moving_Money_From_One_GL_Account_to_Another_Using_a_Zero_Adjustment_Transaction.htm

Thank you for this. Questions. Did you upload the your new list of GL codes into Tess, or enter them manually? To confirm, you only changed future season performance GL codes.  What about gifts and pledges posted to future fiscal years.  Did you leave as is, having moved all GLs to the new funds? We have a lot of funds.  I'm assuming you had to change all funds to new GLs manually? Again, thank you your detailed reply. Very helpful.

Thank you for this. Questions. Did you upload the your new list of GL codes into Tess, or enter them manually? To confirm, you only changed future season performance GL codes.  What about gifts and pledges posted to future fiscal years.  Did you leave as is, having moved all GLs to the new funds? We have a lot of funds.  I'm assuming you had to change all funds to new GLs manually? Again, thank you your detailed reply. Very helpful.

I did not upload them, I built them one by one manually.  There is probably a way to run a script or upload them, but sometimes (I find anyways), it can take just as much time getting an upload file perfect....vs, just doing it manually.

Yes, we only did future seasons performances because once our fiscal year is complete, we aren't supposed to touch anything from the past year.  To be fair though, if we were doing refunds in the 'past' or things like that, we likely would have also switched our past year out just to make sure we weren't using old GLs in any way...but it wasn't applicable in our situation really.

We don't work a lot in funds/campaigns because we have a separate symphony org.  But I am assuming it works relatively the same as the few we do have...and yes, I updated them all manually....it was a pain, but again, not too too bad with lots of planning.  Another option would be to only change future stuff and manually move money from old GLs on a monthly basis...but that just seems like more work.

Essentially, you have to think of everything that might still get used...from past and future funds, past and future performances, etc... and then ideally, change the GLs on all of those things so that as you move forward, they get recorded the right way.

The good news is that, if you miss the odd thing, you can still use the form of payment piece to move money from old into new, it is just a royal pain to do that on an ongoing basis.