Online Bookkeeping Tutorials & Assessments
Certificate IV in Bookkeeping FNS40210
FNSACC301A Process financial transactions and extract interim reports
Onlne Assessment 1 (click on link) send to on completion david@ivy.nsw.edu.au
Resources for your study
The
following chapter provides an overview of the principles of the
onCourse financial process, as well as clear explanations as to how
you get the information you need from onCourse in order to obtain
your monthly / weekly reports and updates on progress.
Principles of Accrual Accounting
onCourse works on the principle of accrual accounting, which means that the income is recorded to the General Ledger (GL) at the point the invoice has been generated, irrespective of when the payment is received. The following diagrams illustrate the difference between accrual accounting and cash accounting and the point at which income is recorded against the GL.
Relationship between the Student and the Debtor within onCourse
onCourse has a clear separation between financial data and enrolment data. Students enrol in classes. Students may not be a company, since only natural people can enrol in a class. The contact linked to an invoice (the debtor) may however be a company or a natural person. The student and the debtor may be the same person; this often happens for a simple enrolment of one person into one class. The student and the debtor could be two different people, or in fact a debtor could pay for the enrolment of multiple students on one invoice.
In the following example of a basic enrolment, there are 2 students Peter and Amy, and the invoice is issued to the the debtor Geoff (1). Geoff then pays the full amount (2).
If an enrolment needs to be cancelled for whatever reason, the cancellation process will generate a credit note to the debtor. It is important to note that although Peter might phone to cancel his enrolment, the credit can only be issued back to Geoff in onCourse.
As the credit note is attached to the debtor, it can be applied to another enrolment for the same student or a different student. In the following example, Peter wishes to cancel his enrolment so the credit note is issued to Geoff as the debtor. Geoff is then able to enrol another person (Sue) into another course using the credit note that has been issued.
Explanation of Financial Transactions Generated by the System
onCourse follows the basic concepts of double-entry accounting: all financial transactions are written to the general ledger in balanced pairs. Asset and expense sit on the left, and liability and income on the right. So an increase in Asset could be matched with an equal decrease in another Asset. An increase in Expense might be matched by an equal increase in Liability.
Within the Transaction window of onCourse, you can clearly see the individual transaction lines that are generated by an enrolment. In this first example, a user creates an enrolment for one student into a class with no GST.
| (1) $300 is added to the income account linked to the Class being enrolled in, |
| (2) $300 is added to Trade Debtors which is a record of the money owed to the college. |
| (3) Now the payment reverses the $300 in Trade Debtors, |
| (4) and $300 is credited to the cheque account where your income is receipted |
For a course fee that includes GST, this would add 2 x additional transaction lines for the GST component of the course fee as shown.
| (1) $350 is added to the income account linked to the Class being enrolled in, |
| (2) $350 is added to Trade Debtors which is a record of the money owed to the college. |
| (3) $35 is added to Trade Debtor which is a record of the GST amount owing, |
| (4) $35 is the GST amount to be received from the Customer (shown as a liability) |
| (5) Now the payment reverses the total amount owing (Fee + GST component) in Trade Debtors |
| (6) and $385 is credited to the cheque account where your income is receipted |
When canceling an enrolment a credit note is issued, this results in the opposite effect to the original invoice. Note that this does not automatically generate a payment out to the student since they might use that credit against a further enrolment or choose to have it paid to them in one of a number of ways.
| (1) $300 is removed from your income |
| (2) and $300 is deducted from the trade debtor account since you are reversing the debt this person had to you |
If a refund is to be given to the original debtor, the resulting financial transactions are as follows.
| (1) When you pay the debtor their refund, $300 goes out of the cheque account and |
| (2) $300 of trade debtors is removed |
Here is an example of the transactions generated for an enrolment cancellation and refund for a class with GST.
| (1) $350 is deducted from the trade debtors account since you are reversing the debt this person had to you, |
| (2) and $350 is removed from your income. |
| (3) The $35 GST portion of the debt is expunged and |
| (4) your $35 debt to the ATO for this GST is also removed. |
| (5) When you pay the debtor their refund, $385 goes out of the cheque account and |
| (6) $385 of trade debtors is removed. |
Assigning Account Codes within onCourse
The standard onCourse set up comes with a number of generic Account Codes that can be assigned to a given Class within onCourse. An organisation also has the ability to add to that Account Code list and customise that list to your organisations' requirements. There are no limits to the number of Account Codes that can be set up.
You can add to the standard list of Account Codes via the Financial menu of onCourse
Within the Account Code window, you can then add a new Account Code to the System, that new code will then be available to be added to any given Class that you create. When adding the code, you will need to stipulate what type of account code it will be, either asset, liability, equity, income, COS or expense.
Once you have set up all your Account Codes, you can then assign those codes to a given Class via the budget tab of the individual Class, the following example shows how to select the relevant income account code for the Class.
Remember also that the relevant expense account for Payroll will be brought across from the Tutor roles and how they have been set up. For example, the role of Helper could be assigned to the expense code of 6000 and the role of Lecturer could be assigned the expense code of 6400.
Accessing Financial Information from onCourse
When running any kind of query against onCourse to extract financial information, keep in mind that enrolment information is attached to the student and all financial information (such as invoices / payments / credit notes) are attached to the debtor within the system. Therefore there is no direct data relationship between the student and the debtor.
There are 4 methods you can use to extract / examine financial information within onCourse;
Printed Financial Reports
onCourse comes with a number of different Financial Reports and each of these are looking at one particular aspect or area of the database such as Invoices. You may also wish to analyze the financial information that is being generated and you can do this by comparing information from one report to the next.
Here are a few simple examples of data comparison that will enable you to verify the accuracy of the financial information; Account Summary = Invoice Total Payment In = Banking Report Payment In = Cheque Account Balance
New Custom Reports can be developed upon request, just bear in mind the rules of how the data is structured within onCourse when considering what kind of information you want to have appear on the Report.
Copying info within list view windows to Excel
Copy and paste list view records into excel. Run your desired query within a given window, hi-light the records you want in the list window and copy. Open excel to paste records.
The benefit of this approach is that it allows you to copy information from a number of different windows on to the same excel worksheet in order to better compare and verify the data.
CSV Exports
onCourse enables you to export data directly from onCourse. As is the case with the printed reports, these exports are essentially flat tables of data, which means that you are only looking at one specific area such as invoices .
Running Queries Directly from the Database
It is possible within onCourse to run queries on information directly from the database server. Whether the server runs on Apache Derby or MySQL or MS SQL all of these relational databases allow you to query the database directly.
This allows you write and edit your own custom reports on demand. Instructions are available in the reports documentation for downloading an installing a free SQL tool for writing your own reports. A high level of familiarity with SQL is required to use this function - it is not part of the standard onCourse product support, but an advanced option which is also available for your own use. If you do not have these skills in house, custom reports can be created for you on request by ish. A quote will be provided for each report.
From an accountancy perspective, what type of relational database you use is not important, the thing you want to be clear about is knowing exactly what data you need to see and how you want to see it.
As an example, if your company wants to run a monthly query against the database which tells you all payments received, for which enrolments within a give timeframe, you would follow these 4 basic steps.
| (1) Define the data you wish to include in your query. It could be the invoice number, invoice date, course code and enrolled student first name and last name. |
| (2) Define how you want this query to appear, which is as simple as setting up your columns within an excel worksheet. By defining this, you are determining the relationship between the data. |
| (3) Define the date range of the query (in other words, set the date range) |
| (4) Run the resulting query against the database |
If you run the same query on a monthly basis, once you have worked out Step 1 and 2, the only thing you need to do to run the query each month is to update the date range. Once this query has been run, you can then import this directly into an excel document and you are ready to go.
Banking and Reconciliation
As funds are received for course payments, onCourse, via the Accounts tab of the onCourse client, allows you to bank these funds in your nominated account. You also have the ability to run a Reconciliation Statement, to verify that the payments into onCourse match your banking report.
Banking
As onCourse is integrated with a credit card payment gateway, the system will automatically settle bank funds received via the credit card gateway. This settlement process is automatically done between approximately 7pm and 9pm each evening and will be settled into your nominated account the following business day. If a payment is processed after the nightly settlement cut off time, the payment will not appear in your nominated account until the day after.
For all other payments received via Cheque, Electronic Funds Transfer, Money Order or Cash, will need to be banked by your accounts department. The 'Deposit Banking' function within the onCourse client allows you to track the date of settlement, method of payment, payment amount and staff member who performs this function.It also ensures that you do not 'double count' any funds to your nominated bank account.
Cheque payments would of course be subject to your own banks' timelines on the processing of cheques, with the funds not appearing in your account until several days after being banked. For Cash Payments and Electronic Funds Transfers, these settlement times are more immediate, please check with your bank for exact timelines for processing funds.
Reconciliation
The reconcile statement function within onCourse client accounts tab allows you to verify that onCourse payments match your bank statements. The Reconciliation Report that is generated can be run on a weekly or monthly basis, dependent upon your own internal financial procedures. The reconciliation report function will provide a line by line itemization of all funds that have been reconciled, listed by the relevant income account.
