TABLE OF CONTENTS
Description
Ben Taylor, CEO & Co-Founder of SoftLedger, gives an overview of SoftLedger’s core accounting and reporting functionality. This includes Reporting, Financial, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Cash Management modules. See the video and transcript of the video contents below.
0:00 Reports
5:18 Financials
11:45 Accounts Receivable
15:03 Accounts Payable
17:30 Cash Management
Reports
Financials
Financials are customizable reports that can be used to represent standard financial reports such as your balance sheet and income statement, but can be used to create other reports as well.
Running Financials by location, as shown, displays a balance sheet for all of the immediate children of Global, Global on a standalone balance, any intercompany eliminations, and the consolidated balance. In order to investigate any amount shown, you can simply click on the amount to see the underlying transactional detail. You can continue to drill into each transaction to pull up the source document, to quickly identify the nature of any transaction.
Financials are also available to be run by Month, Customer, Vendor, Cost Center, and other dimensions. The Type dropdown drives what goes into the column headers of this report.
Trial Balance
Next, the Trial Balance is the quickest place to pull account level information for a given period. The information shown here is based on the system date in the top right. Balance Sheet accounts are as of the end of each month and Income Statement accounts are shown month to date. For accounts with multiple currencies, you can drill into each amount to see the balance in each currency.
General Ledger
The General Ledger section has two reports. First, the Summary enables users to quickly see an overview of the company financial details over a given period. This is generally good for quickly reviewing a limited number of transactions. The General Ledger Detail is best for investigating and reconciling accounts. This report gives the underlying transactional detail for the selected date range and account, with a running balance on the right side.
Also, it’s important to note that many tables in the application can be filtered and those filters can be saved as custom reporting views. These can also be exported to excel.
Budgets vs Actual
The budget vs actual report shows actual journal entries recorded, compared with the budget for the selected period. These can either be run by ledger account or by individual dimensions, like cost centers.
Journal Report
The Journal Report is the most comprehensive report in the system. This report shows all Journal Entries, with a lot of contextual information to incorporate the nature of the underlying transactions. As you can see in the column selector, there is a lot of information here. We always want to make sure our users can do as much as possible in the application, but if it’s not possible to create a certain report, there’s always the option to export all journal entries to excel. You can also use saved views to create various canned reports, to avoid having to applying the same filters each time.
Financial
Locations
Locations refer to the hierarchy we looked at right at the start of this call. Each location has a parent and based on that structure, that’s how the hierarchy is formed. Generally this used for financial reporting consolidation, but locations can be used for any instance where you need separate financial statements, user permissions, or have another need to segment financial data.
Reporting currencies are also set per location. For multicurrency companies, rates are automatically pulled in with each transaction and then balances can be revalued at month end, during the accounting close process.
Ledger Accounts
Ledger Accounts refer to your core chart of accounts. These represent the base level of the nature of each transaction. Account Types refer to the high level accounting categories (Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Expenses, and Revenue) and Sub-Types are more granular, customizable groupings. Cash is an example of a Sub-Type that would likely be mapped to Cash and Cash Equivalents on the Balance Sheet.
Accounts can also be linked to locations. Commonly this is done for bank account and credit card accounts that are entity or region specific.
Finally, the Revalue Forex flag determines whether or not a particular account needs to be included in the monthly foreign currency revaluation process.
Dimensions
Cost Centers, Products, and Jobs are very similar, they are standard dimensions to add more detail to a transaction. Typically Cost Centers represent Departments, Products represent revenue streams, and Jobs are used to capture mini P&Ls for jobs or projects. In addition to these standard dimensions, we have up to 3 custom dimensions that can be renamed to correspond with your industry. Property and Investment are custom dimensions.
Journal Entries
Journal entries can be entered via the user interface here. Journal entries require a Reference and Ledger Accounts, and additional information can be added as needed. You can also automatically record the corresponding journal entries for any intercompany transactions and allocate intercompany transactions relating to multiple companies.
Finally, you’ll notice throughout the application that attachments can be added. This is a great practice for audit purposes, as you’re able to easily drill into each transaction from the financials to pull up these attachments. This saves a lot of time when investigating variances and providing support for auditors.
Once a journal entry is created, it’s in a draft status, where it can be modified prior to being approved by a user with approval permissions.
The intercompany document journals section is where your team can review and approve any journal entries that have been automatically created from AR invoices or AP bills.
Reconcile
The Reconcile section is used for individual account reconciliations. Simply choose the relevant date range and account, then you’re able to mark the individual transactions as reconciled. Plus, you’re able to add the external balance to display the difference from SoftLedger.
Budget Entry
Budgets can be used to add monthly budgeted amounts by ledger account and dimension. For instance, let me pull up a budget for 2021. As you can see, you can simply add in amounts for each account, for each month and then click Save Changes to update the budget. Also, if you’d like to create a more granular budget, you can add budgets per dimension as well.
Bulk Journal Import
The Bulk Journal Import enables you to quickly upload journal entries into the system, via Excel or CSV. Our easy to use template makes the process very quick and simple. Plus, the ability to upload Excel files means you can use formulas in your upload template, avoiding the need to export tabs, copy, and save as values. If there are any issues with the upload, there are validation checks that will guide you through the rows that require attention.
Accounts Receivable
AR Aging
Our accounts receivable module starts with the AR Aging, which shows your receivables aged by customer and invoice. You can click on the invoice links to get additional information about a particular invoice and the customer links to view customer information.
Invoices
The Invoices summary screen is where you can create new invoices, as well as review a report showing all invoices. To create a new invoice, click new in the top left. Select a Customer and any other required fields in the top portion of the invoice. The current location is pre-populated, as is the system date. The AR account is populated based on your system default account settings.
Select your line item type on the left side. Description line items are free text fields, whereas Items and Kits pull information from inventory module. Enter any other necessary information, select a tax code if applicable, and click submit.
Once created, the invoice is in a draft status called created, where it can be modified or deleted. A user with approver permissions can approve the invoice, which will then issue the invoice and post the corresponding journal entries. If the email setting is on, the invoice PDF will be emailed to the email distribution list for that customer.
Invoice Import
Invoices can also be uploaded via Excel or CSV. Our easy to use upload templates enables you to quickly add invoices to the system. The help link in the top right takes you to the relevant section in our user guide, which includes instructions and our upload template.
Accounts Payable
AP Aging
The accounts payable module starts with the AP Aging. You can see payables aged by vendor and bill. By clicking on each bill, you can see additional information, including all underlying journal entries.
Bills
The bills summary screen is where you can enter new bills and provides a comprehensive summary report showing all your bills. This can easily be filtered and exported to excel.
To enter a new Bill, click the new button in the top left. Select a Vendor and any other required fields in the top portion of the bill. The current location is prep-populated, as is the system date. The AP account is automatically populated based on your system default account settings.
Select your line item type on the left side. Description line items are free text fields, whereas Items and Kits pull information from inventory module. Enter any other necessary information, select a tax code if applicable, and click submit.
Once created, the bill is in a draft status called created, where it can be modified or deleted. A user with approver permissions can approve the bill, which will then switch the bill to an approved status and the related journal entries will be posted.
Bill Import
Bills can also be uploaded via Excel or CSV. Our easy to use upload templates enables you to quickly add bills to the system. The help link in the top right takes you to the relevant section in our user guide, which includes instructions and our upload template.
Cash Management
Next, the cash management module allows you to directly import transactions from your bank and credit card providers, and apply payments to invoices and bills.
Link Banks
The Link Banks screen enables you to link your financial institution. Simply search for your bank, credit card provider, or other institution, and enter your credentials.
Bank Feeds
Once linked, you can then import transactions on the Bank Feeds screen. These transactions can quickly be recorded in the general ledger or used to create cash receipts, to apply to invoices.
Receive Cash
The Receive Cash section is where you can apply cash receipts to outstanding receivables. First, you need to create a cash receipt by clicking New in the top left of the cash receipts screen. Choose the type, enter the amount, cash receipt number (this is typically an external ID), and customer. The Ledger Account represents the cash account where the funds were received and the Unapplied Cash Account is the account to be credited while determining where this cash receipt needs to be applied. Both of these accounts can be pre-populated by adding them to the system default account settings. Please note there is also a setting to skip this journal entry in the system settings as well, if you don’t need to record cash receipts as unapplied cash.
When you’re ready to apply a cash receipt, go to the Apply Receipts screen, and select the cash receipt. To save time, you can autofill the relevant invoice row with default information. Then click apply and confirm to create a payment against that invoice. There is an additional step where this payment can be approved in the AR Payments screen, or you can can skip that step by turning on the relevant setting in system settings.
Pay Bills
The Pay Bills screen is where you can apply payments to outstanding bills. To mark a bill as paid, simply choose Manual as the Payment Method, complete the relevant row (using the auto-fill row button saves time). Then click Pay to create the payment. Once the payment is created, it can be approved in the AP Payments screen. Similar to AR payment, you can skip this step by enabling the relevant setting in system settings.
Vendor Credits are used to capture outstanding credits for a vendor, that don’t necessarily relate to a specific bill or for bills that have already been paid. In order to create a vendor credit, choose New in the top left. Add the amount, number, and vendor. The Ledger Account is the account that will be credited when it’s applied to a Bill. There’s also an option to book an entry upon creation of the vendor credit, if there’s a timing difference between recording the vendor credit and applying to a bill.
Reach out to support with any questions through the chat widget in the bottom right,or through support@softledger.com