Poll for DBAs: how many GLs to you have in T_GL_ACCOUNT?

One organization - 3 years

Total: 3219

By Inactive Flag:

Y 3219
N 0

Requisite explanation - we have 40+ business units (each of our house museums plus various other parts of the organization) as subaccounts on our primary chart of accounts. When we launched, we built out this table by basically joining every possible subaccount Tessitura might need to deal with (museum 1, museum 2, etc.) to every possible account (grants corp, grants foundation, program income, etc.). Some of these may seldom or never be used, but that way we had a consistent set of accounts and subaccounts available for all business units.

One organization - 3 years

Total: 3219

By Inactive Flag:

Y 3219
N 0

Requisite explanation - we have 40+ business units (each of our house museums plus various other parts of the organization) as subaccounts on our primary chart of accounts. When we launched, we built out this table by basically joining every possible subaccount Tessitura might need to deal with (museum 1, museum 2, etc.) to every possible account (grants corp, grants foundation, program income, etc.). Some of these may seldom or never be used, but that way we had a consistent set of accounts and subaccounts available for all business units.

So, in a financial sense, you are effectively reporting on 40 organizations, each with a little under 100 GLs, right?

Sort of, but probably more accurately it's the opposite of that, since the primary account numbers are by type of revenue and not by business unit. (The business units are represented by subaccount numbers) When it breaks down to all business units (not just house museums themselves, but also education, functions, IT, community engagement, admin, etc. ) it ends up being something like 55-60 accounts per classification.

So, for example, 

4250-1-015-00 is Foundation Grants for the Library and Archives

4250-1-015-RW is foundation grants for a particular grant funded project in the Library and Archives

4250-1-020-00 is foundation grants for the Arnold House in Lincoln, RI

4250-1-030-00 is foundation grants for Beauport in Gloucester, MA

4250-1-155-00 is foundation grants supporting Information Technology (If only we frequently got money in that bucket!)

4250-1-295-S1 is foundation grants for School Programs in Rhode Island

4250-1-295-S2 is foundation grants for school programs in the Newbury, MA area

etc. 

Repeat the whole thing again for admission fees 

4400-1-030-00 would be admission fees from Beauport, etc.

and on and on through a bunch of other top level accounts. Some of them are a little nonsensical - 

4531-1-030-00 is non-taxable farm products/plant sales for Beauport, which is not a farm and doesn't sell plants. But it seemed easier to have them all consistent up front than trying to tailor them to the specific business activities per site.

That's actually the way that our external GL system is set up: in fact the "department" doesn't show up until the fourth block of numbers.