About general ledger accounts

In the 1-7 General Ledger Accounts window, you can view a summary of activity for an account broken down by fiscal period. As an aid to organizing the financial data, you can use subsidiary accounts or departments.

You can manually enter a budget for each ledger account that takes into consideration the activity of each period within the fiscal year. Over the course of the fiscal year, you can generate reports detailing the budget versus actual account activity. Sage 100 Contractor also stores period balances for the previous fiscal year. When you archive at the fiscal year-end, Sage 100 Contractor transfers the period balances from the This Year column to the Last Year column.

Comparisons between the account activity of the current year and the budget or account activity for the prior year provide a valuable way for you to analyze the company finances. The comparisons enable you to create budgets with greater accuracy, determine areas in the company that are over or under budgeted, and compare projections to the actual activity.

Because the 1-7 General Ledger Accounts window only displays account activity, you cannot enter adjusting entries in this window. If you need to correct a period balance, you can enter the transaction using the 1-3 Journal Transactions window.

In ledger accounts, you can organize data using departments or subsidiary accounts. Departments allow you to group data across the income and expense accounts, whereas subsidiary accounts allow you to divide data under a single, controlling ledger account. Sage 100 Contractor also allows you to set up summary accounts, which allow you to combine ledger accounts for financial reports.