PeopleSoft Financial Management System is made up of tables comprised
of sets of related fields.
When you enter a transaction in the PeopleSoft system, some of these
values will default for you and you will not need to enter them for each
transaction. The implementation team established these defaults for each
user based on the tasks the user performs.
Some of the basic PeopleSoft terms are defined below.
Business Units
Business units are established to identify each individual company or
business entity. The business unit is a 5-character alphanumeric field that
identifies the owner of the business transactions.
The only business unit used for financial transactions is CASE1.
SetID
SetIDs are set up to group sets (TableSets) of values for specific
applications. The PeopleSoft SetID allows you to group together values
such as vendors, ChartFields, customers, etc. A SetID may be attached to
a single business unit or multiple business units may share the values
assigned to a SetID.
The only SetID currently in use is CASE1.
PeopleSoft Dates
There are two types of dates that you will use in financial processing.
Effective Dates
Effective Dates are used primarily for setup and organizational
information. This information is governed by a date that indicates when all
of the options on that page are to take effect. As changes are made, new
rows of information with a new effective date are entered.
Effective dates allow you to keep historical records (past, present and
future) information in a table. The system separates effective-dated
information into three types.
When you enter an effective date, it usually defaults to your system’s
current date. This should be changed to the date in which the information
takes effect.
When you access effective-dated information, the system looks at the
current date and then supplies values based on the information in effect
on that date. A value marked as inactive or with a future date will not be
available for selection.
A department is an example of effective dated information. If you make a
change to a department which will become active a month from today, you
would enter the future date as the effective date. The department change
will not be available for transactions or reports until the date entered as the
effective date.
Transaction Dates
Most of the entries that you make in the course of your daily tasks will
have dates. These are transaction dates and indicate the date that the
information was entered into the system.
Budget Period
Your financial transactions will also be posted to a specific budget period.
This allows you to track and report on fiscal activity for any time period at
the university.
Case will use a Budget Period that dates from July 1 – June 30. The
Budget Period value will be derived from the date on which the Fiscal Year
ends. For example, the fiscal year that ends on June 30, 2005 will be
posted to a Budget Period of 2005.
Accounting Periods
Each transaction you record in PeopleSoft will be posted to a specific
Accounting Period. These are the consecutive months within a Fiscal
Year
You will frequently need to specify an accounting period when running
inquiries or reports. The Accounting Periods at Case are:
Period Description
1 July
2 August
3 September
4 October
5 November
6 December
7 January
8 February
9 March
10 April
11 May
12 June
998 Closing period for year-end adjustments
0 Prior Year Balance Forward information (recorded
automatically after year-end-close)
Currency
Your financial transactions deal with money. PeopleSoft is a global system
that allows for multiple currency types and you may be prompted for a
currency code when you enter a transaction.
At Case the currency will always be USD (US Dollars).
Ledger/Ledger Group
A Ledger is a set of posted balances that represents a set of balanced
books for a Business Unit. Ledgers store posted net balances for each
combination of ChartFields by accounting period and fiscal year. The
PeopleSoft General Ledger Application allows you to define Ledgers to
record actuals (periodic financial data), budgets, forecasts, statistics, or
any other type of data at any level. The number of Ledgers you add will
depend on the type of data you want to maintain. The Application supports
detailed and summary Ledgers.
Multiple detail Ledgers can be linked together in a Ledger group. When
you post a Journal entry, you have the option of posting the Journal to a
single Ledger or to all Ledgers in a Ledger group.
When you make a journal entry in the system, the Ledger group will
automatically be populated for you. This Ledger Group has Ledgers
attached to it. When your journal entry is posted, the Ledger attached to
the entry defines the set of books that get updated.
Your expense and revenue journal entries will be posted to the actuals
ledger group called ACTUALS.
ChartFields
In the PeopleSoft General Ledger application, the fields that make up your
chart of accounts and provide it with an overall structure are called
ChartFields. Each transaction is posted to one or more of these
ChartFields that allow you flexibility to report on your financial information
by any of these designated data groups.
