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General Ledger Best Practices
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this chapter under the “Use a Data Warehouse for Report Distribution” heading.
This method is expensive to implement, and requires a considerable amount of
programming time. An alternative is to overlay the general ledger with packaged
consolidation and reporting software.
This type of software is sold by Hyperion, and is called the Hyperion Enterprise
software, as well as the ancillary Hyperion Financial Analysis Solutions software.
These packages can be found on the company’s Web site at www.hyperion.com.
The software can be linked to any number of general ledgers through published
application programming interfaces, as well as through Hyperion’s integration
tool, Hyperion Application Link. Once the data is combined in the Hyperion
Enterprise software, it can conduct automatic currency translations, intercompany
eliminations, European Monetary Union dual currency reporting, and consolidation
tracking. When combined with the Hyperion Enterprise Reporting software, it
can also allow users to drill down through the data in issued reports to the under-
lying transactional detail, as well as export reports to electronic spreadsheets, to
the PDF (Portable Document Format) or HTML file formats, or post them directly
to a Web site for general access.
All of these advantages are available through a packaged system, rather than
a custom-designed data warehouse whose rollout time and cost is much higher.
The primary issues with the Hyperion solution are that some interfaces with out-
lying general ledgers will likely require customized programming, and the cost of
the software.
Cost: Installation time:
14–13 USE AUTOMATED ERROR-CHECKING
Despite the best possible training and experience, it is still possible, if not likely,
for a general ledger accountant to enter incorrect information into the general
ledger, or to not catch incorrect information others have entered. This informa-
tion may not be caught until it appears in the preliminary financial statements,
necessitating a hurried investigation and correction, which delays the completion
and delivery of the statements. Given the volume of transactions summarized in
the general ledger, it would take a miraculous accountant to catch all possible
irregularities before they are reported for the rest of the company to see in the
financial statements.
The best practice that helps to eliminate some of these irregularities is using
automated error-checking. This approach can take a variety of forms. One is that
the journal entry input screen can contain controls over the size of entries that are
allowed or the accounts to which entries are made. For example, any entry over
$1 million may be automatically rejected, as would any entry to retained earnings
(though with an override by a person with the appropriate password, since some-
times these preset boundaries will be exceeded). Another option is for the system