Welcome to the online help for Harvard's General Ledger and Journal Entry Process The General Ledger (GL) is the central repository for transactions from Harvard's financial applications (PCard, Budget Tool, Accounts Payable, Web Voucher, Payroll) and other local interfaces. Manual journals are entries you make to the General Ledger using Oracle to redistribute or reallocate money from one 33-digit chart of accounts combination to another or several 33-digit combinations. Typically, manual journals are created to:
Depending on your local unit requirements, you can create journals by either:
After you enter a journal online, Oracle will post all unposted journals during the nightly sweep. You should go into the General Ledger the next day to find out if your journal has changed from "unposted' status to "posted" status. If your journal is unposted you can begin to investigate the cause or call the Helpdesk (6-2001) and they will help you find out why it didn't post. The Month End Closing Schedule for 2000-2001 or the Month End Closing Schedule for 2001-2002 list the months in which a journal you created will be posted. Official University-wide Harvard Accounting Policies also explain more about the accounting requirements for journals.
There is a convention for naming the journals you enter into the system. Following this convention allows others to understand who prepared the journal and its purpose, as well as helping you find the journals you created. The journal naming convention is:
Also, when you process a journal that affects another tub or department, you should include your name and phone number in the Description field on the Journal Entry screen so that the other department can contact you should a question arise about your journal. For example, you might enter:
If the preparer's name is not in the Description field, you can still find out who entered the journal. First, find the journal online, select Help from the menu, and then choose "About This Record." The ID number of the person who entered the journal appears. You can then use AWS2 / HR Queries to look up the preparer's ID number and get their name.
Correctly completing the Category field on the Journal Entry screen identifies the purpose of the journal. For example, you should use the category Year End Entry when entering journal to record year-end reclassifications and adjustments. All journals with the Category "Adjustment" or "Payroll" require you to enter additional information (called Descriptive Flexfields by Oracle on the Journal Entry screen) about the journal to create an electronic paper trail about the journal.
Batches are groups of related journals. Journal batches can help you retrieve, review, and reverse journals. If you create only one journal, the system creates (by default) a batch for that one journal with the journal header information becoming the batch information. Consider using journal batches for:
Only reverse journals you created. You can reverse individual journals in a batch, or you can reverse entire bacthes. However, you cannot reverse specific journal lines: if one line in a journal is reversed, all lines in that journal will be reversed.
Internal Billings are transactions that occur within or between tubs. They are transactions that shift revenue or expenses between units at the University but do not increase the overall levels of revenue or expenses for the University as a whole. The following are examples of internal billings:
It is important to include your name and phone number in the Description field on the Journal Entry screen when you create an internal billing journal. Doing so allows the other department to contact you if they have a question about your journal. For example, you might enter:
Recurring journals allow you to process journals to the same 33-digit account code(s) on a regular basis. Recurring journals are useful for:
There are two types of recurring journals: standard and skeleton.
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