Advantage 3 Accounting Basics

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Advantage 3 Accounting Basics
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u/its
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Advantage 3 Accounting Basics
This course is designed to give the Advantage
user a basic understanding of the accounting and
budget structure within the Advantage 3 Financial
System. For those that are interested in
additional information on fund accounting or the
budget process, please contact the Comptrollers
or Budget Office.
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Lesson objectives
By completing this lesson, you will gain a basic
understanding of

• The Concept of Fund Accounting
• Organizational and Grant Chart of Account (COA)
  Elements (page codes in parentheses).
• Advantage 3 Budget Models
• Advantage 3 Documents and Accounting Elements

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Fund Accounting Concepts

• NAU has an important responsibility to taxpayers
  and others to safeguard the assets entrusted to
  us, and to report annually on the sources and
  uses of the funds that we receive. To help
  accomplish these goals we use Fund Accounting at
  NAU.

• Accounting for resources and activity within a
  self-balancing set of accounts
• Funds are separately maintained to reflect
  differences in funding sources (resources) and
  spending restrictions (activity)
• Funds can be thought of as separate buckets
  which are never mixed with other buckets

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Fund COA Elements
The Fund Code is the primary Fund level COA
element within Advantage. Fund Rollups are used
for reporting purposes.
Fund Category (FCAT) Fund Class (FCLS)Fund Group
(FGRP)Fund Type (FTYP)
FUNDRollups
Fund Codes by Major Fund Category (FCAT)1xxx
State and General Operating (state
appropriations)2xxx Designated / Local
(designated for specific purposes)3xxx
Restricted (grant accounts)4xxx Auxiliary
(substantially self-supporting activities)7xxx
Agency (custodian funds for outside agencies)
FUNDCode
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Fund Balance
Fund balance is made up of self-balancing COA
elements Revenue Source Code (RSRC), Object Code
(OBJ) and Balance Sheet Code (BSA).
OBJECT(Expense)
REVENUE SOURCE(Revenue)
BALANCE SHEET



FUND BALANCE
100 CLASS FEE
lt40gt CLASS SUPPLIES


60 FUND BALANCE

60 BSA
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Organizational COA
Within each Fund, spending units are defined at
the Unit level (Org in Adv2), the primary
organizational COA element at which budgets are
established. New rollups in Adv3 include Cabinet
and Branch.
100 President 200 Provost 300 Administration
Finance 400 Enrollment Management....
CABINET200
210 College of Arts Letters 220 College of
Business Administration 230 College of
Education......
BRANCH 210
ADS School Of Art Design ARD Ardrey
Auditorium ARG Art Gallery ARL College of Arts
and Letters
DEPTADS
UNIT1113
1113 Schl of Art Design 2501 Schl Of Art
Design-SS 2508 Bronze Fund
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Grant COA Elements
In Advantage 3, Program COA elements are added
for Grant accounts. The primary elements are
Major Program and Program, which relate to
Department and Unit respectively. The new
elements are used to help track reimbursable
direct and indirect costs.
Organizational COA
Program COA
DEPT(BIO)
MAJOR PROGRAM(BIO)
PROGRAM(321X)
UNIT(321X)
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Budget Models
University Budgets are established using three
Advantage budget models

• Expense Budget (model 80) expense budgets are
  established for all spending units regardless of
  fund.
• Revenue Budget (model 34) revenue budgets are
  established primarily for units within
  designated, auxiliary and restricted funds.
• Grant Budget (model 37) grant budgets are
  established for spending units within the
  restricted fund.

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Budget Controls
The following budget constraints are used to
control spending

• Presence Control Budget lines must exist at the
  lowest budget level for documents to process
  successfully. An budget line does not exist
  error will be generated if a document is
  processed against a budget line that does not
  exist.
• Grant Spending Controls The grant budgets are
  setup to prevent spending beyond budgeted direct
  and indirect charges.

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Expense Budget (model 80)
Expense budgets are based on a combination of
Fund and Organizational COA elements which roll
up at two primary reporting levels

• Department Unit Level (BQ80LV1)Fund Dept
  Unit (Appropriation Unit)
• Object Level (BQ80LV2)Fund Dept Unit - Object

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Revenue Budget (model 34)
Revenue budgets are based on a combination of
Fund and Organizational COA elements which roll
up at two basic levels

• Unit Level (BQ34LV1) Fund Dept Unit
  (Appropriation Unit)
• Revenue Source Level (BQ34LV2) Fund Dept
  Unit Revenue Source

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Grant Budget (model 37)
Grant budgets use Program COA elements to track
direct and indirect charges associated with the
grant. Budgeted direct charges will represent the
total of a Grants expense budget lines, and
budgeted indirect charges will represent the
estimated indirect cost recovery associated with
the grant.

• Major Program (BQ37LV1)Dept Major Program
• Program (BQ37LV2)Dept Major Program - Program

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Budget Level COA Summary
Expense and Revenue Budgets (Models 80 and 34)
FUND(XXXX)
Restricted (Grant Accounts)
State, Local Auxiliary
Grant Budget (Model 37)
MAJOR PROGRAM(XXX)
DEPT(XXX)
DEPT(XXX)
PROGRAM(XXXX)
UNIT(XXXX)
UNIT(XXXX)
Grant Direct and Indirect Budget Lines
Revenue ExpenseBudget Lines
Revenue ExpenseBudget Lines
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Advantage Documents
A document is a single unit of work containing a
hierarchy of related data objects that are
processed and accepted together.  For example the
Purchase Order (PO) document consists of a
Header, Vendor Lines, Commodity Lines, and
Accounting Lines. The Accounting Line object or
page is where COA and posting information is
entered.
New features in Advantage 3

• COA elements are inferred from the Accounting
  Template.
• Posting information is controlled through Event
  Types.

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Accounting Templates

• The Accounting Template is a field on the
  Accounting page. The fields value is used to
  infer the following COA elements on Advantage
  Documents
• Fund (FUND)
• Department (DEPT)
• Unit (UNIT)
• Appropriation Unit (APPR)
• Activity (ACTV)
• Program (PROG)
• In most cases, the Accounting Template (ACTPL) is
  a 6 character value consisting of the Dept code
  and last 3 characters of the Unit code.

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Accounting Template (cont.)

• The Accounting Template must be used on all
  documents. This feature provides a convenient
  shortcut that eliminates having to type in
  FUND,DEPT, UNIT, ACTIVITY on documents.
• To complete each accounting line, enter your
  Accounting Template information and any COA
  elements not inferred (e.g., Revenue/Object code,
  Sub Revenue/Obj).

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Event Types

• Event Types are codes which signify what posting
  codes (debits credits) will be used while also
  bringing in specific rules for data entry
  concerning referenced transactions, customer
  codes, vendor codes, and all defined chart of
  account elements in the system.
• These codes allow you to record different types
  of transactions on a single document. For
  example, instead of having two separate documents
  for expense to expense (IX) and revenue to
  expense (II) transactions in Advantage 2, we will
  have a single transfer document (IET).
• For most documents, Event Types will default to a
  pre-defined value when the document is validated.

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Course summary
Concepts of Fund Accounting
Organizational and Grant Chart of Account (COA)
Elements
Advantage Documents and Accounting Elements
Budget Models
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