A chartfield is a set of numbers and codes associated with a particular grant, fund, activity of a grant or fund, department, etc. Chartfields are not all that complicated; however, they can be confusing at first. Below is a picture of a typical chartfield area:
An item that is missing from this chartfield, but required for all chartfields, is the Business Unit. The reason the Business Unit field is not present here is because it was asked for in the top portion of this document since it is absolutely essential that it be properly field out. This field and the other chartfield fields are discussed in detail below.
This refers to the entity that is expending or receiving funds. For instance, typically you will see, “BKCMP,” which stands for “Bakersfield Campus,” in this field. Another Business Unit that may be seen is, “BKFDN,” which stands for “Bakersfield Foundation.”
This field defines the type of expense (accounts beginning with a “6”) or revenue (accounts beginning with a “5”). The values in this field are independent of any other field as they are derived from State account codes and are used for State audit purposes. For instance: a person purchasing office supplies would use the account code 660003 since the description for that account code is “supplies and services.”
This specifies which fund the money will come from or go into. These funds are campus fund accounts. For instance: BK001 refers to the campus general fund, where as MT020 refers to the majority of Grant Funds.
Note: Some grants are large enough that they will be given their own Fund Code other than MT020.
This specifies the department that the funds will go to or come from. This is required as it tells you who is asking for the funds to be spent or received. For instance: the Grants department is D10730. If procurement receives a requisition order from the Grants department asking for items to be purchased using the MU001 fund code, they would call the Grants office and ask why we are attempting to use funds from ASi fees.
This field is used to indicate expenditures or revenues that are incurred from campus-wide or group activities without a specified end-date. Examples of a program are the campus mail-delivery system, the Antelope Valley
This is an important field for our office as it refers to projects that have a specified start and end date. Typically this means grants. All of our grants have associated codes with them, usually something like: G10140. This code will be found within the, “Project” field.
Note: Some grants are large enough that they will be given their own Fund Code other than MT020.
This code is typically used to provide more details and is used at the discretion of the Administrator for the associated project/ program/ fund. For instance, a paper program might include revenue from the use of copiers and the use of printers. The chartfields for those would have the same account code ( 580090 – “Revenue Other” ) but nothing to delineate between the revenues earned from copiers and the revenue earned from printers. To be able to get this information, class codes would be implemented (C0001 ---> C0050 are user defined) to better describe the source of revenues. Class codes are also good to use when tracking expenses by person within a particular program or grant if needed.
Chartfield Example
A completed chartfield will typically look something like the following:
Bus. Unit: Account: Fund: Department: Program: Project: Class:
BKCMP 660003 MT020 D10730 G10140 C0001
In this example, the business unit doing business is the Bakersfield Main Campus (a.k.a. “CSUB”), the budget statement account being expensed is 660003 (all accounts that start with “6” are expense accounts), the money is coming from the Grant Fund and the transaction is being charged to the NSF grant project under the Grants Department.
