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New Controls for Journal Entries
August 26, 2020
To help reduce the need for journal entry corrections, two new controls have been implemented. These controls both focus on ledger accounting and limiting options for the broad user community. There are two primary controls, which will apply to all journal entries entered in the user interface, uploaded spreadsheets, and journal entry system integrations.
Limiting Available Ledger Accounts
As of May 2020, there are approximately 640 available Ledger Accounts. Many of these are exclusively intended for use by system processes or Central Finance users. This control will limit the ledger accounts available to distributed users and journal sources, making certain accounts available only to Central Accountants and (in some cases) OSP Accountants. If a restricted Ledger Account is present, the journal entry will not complete and the user will receive an error message (example below).
This new control became active in workday beginning Wednesday, June 24, 2020 but is initially an Alert only. Alerts do not prevent submission or approval. Please be mindful of any Alert received upon submission of an accounting journal; the approver will also see the alert from the Inbox. Prior to approval, the journal should be updated to remove ledger accounts that should not be used. This control will convert to a “hard stop” sometime after units have completed their June 30, 2020 closing entries. An announcement will be made in the Business Update prior to this release.
Allowing Specific Pairs of Ledger Account and Category
This control looks at Ledger Account and Spend/Revenue Category to see if the appropriate pair is used. If improper pair is used, the journal entry will not complete and the user will receive an error message (example below).
This new control became active in workday beginning the week of August 24, 2020 but is initially an Alert only. Alerts do not prevent submission or approval. Please be mindful of any Alert received upon submission of an accounting journal; the approver will also see the alert from the Inbox. Prior to approval, the journal should be updated to remove ledger accounts that should not be used. This control will convert to a “hard stop” later in fiscal 2021. An announcement will be made in the Business Update prior to this release.
Actions:
- Familiarize yourself with (and check your systems or spreadsheets for):
- proper pairs using the workday report “Ledger Accounts with Spend/Revenue Categories – Yale”
- restricted Ledger Accounts using the Ledger Account Restrictions document on the COA website’s Segment Values (Ledger Account) section.
- All users that upload spreadsheets (including service providers) or have system integrations are encouraged to build in extra time for correcting potential errors when this control becomes effective.
For questions on ledger account or spend/revenue category usage, please email coa@yale.edu. For questions on system processes or errors, please email askfinance@yale.edu.