GL Account Segment & Wage Transaction Grouping Maintenance

A GL Account Segments maintenance area is available to allow the following to be configured for the Finance Integration module:

• the General Ledger (GL) account structure that will map transactions that are exported out of the FastTrack360 to an account in your organisation's financial system

• wage export grouping options that determine the level of transactional detail that is required when exporting wage information from the FastTrack360 system.

The GL account segment and wage transaction grouping configuration is validity period-driven. That is, a different configuration can be set up for different date ranges if necessary. When a Finance Integration batch is created, the system uses the configuration that is valid on the date when the batch is created to determine the applicable GL account structure and wage transaction grouping.

GL Account Structure Configuration

When transactions are exported to a third-party finance system the transactions must be posted to the relevant General Ledger (GL) account based on your organisation's financial reporting requirements. To allow the Finance Integration module to match a transaction to the relevant GL account, it is necessary to configure the GL account segment structure that applies.

Finance Integration uses the account segment, which is defined against a record in the FastTrack360 system, to populate the GL account string that maps transactions to the relevant GL account. For example, an account segment can be recorded against a Pay Company record in the Pay module. If a pay company segment is included in the GL account segment configuration, the pay company segment of the GL account string that maps a transaction to a GL account will be populated with the account segment of the pay company to which the transaction is linked.

By default, the Finance Integration module allows a maximum of eight account segments to be included in the GL account structure. The valid account segments are listed and described below. For each segment, the table identifies from where the corresponding account segment value will be derived to populate the account segment.

The following rules apply to configuring the GL account structure:

• there must be at least one account segment in the account structure

• the same account segment cannot be used multiple times

• the account segments can be applied in any order.

Generation of the GL Account String for Job-based Versus Candidate-based Transactions

When generating a GL account string for a transaction that is job-based, the account segment value that will populate a segment will be derived from the job office hierarchy or from the corresponding job order or invoice where possible. A job-based transaction is a transaction that can be linked to a job order, such as payment of a timesheet item, whereby the timesheet is linked to a job order.

For example, if segment 1 of the GL account mapping is set to Company, the account segment value that will populate segment 1 will be derived from the pay company record that is linked to the agency office that manages the job order to which the timesheet, and therefore the pay item, belongs. If account segment 2 is set to Skill Group, the account segment value that will populate segment 2 will be derived based on the skill group assigned to the corresponding job order.

Similarly, for transactions that are candidate-based the export code that populates a segment is derived from the candidate office hierarchy or from the corresponding candidate record or invoice where possible. A candidate-based transaction is a transaction that is linked to a candidate but is not linked to a job order, such as a pay transaction that results from payment of a manual pay item in a pay batch.

Defaults for Balance Sheet Transactions

Candidate-based balance sheet (BS) transactions often do not require the same level of financial reporting as other types of transactions. Therefore, such transactions are often posted to the same account/sub-account regardless of the exact nature of the transaction. Where this is the case, the same predefined GL account mapping string can be used to map each candidate-based BS transaction to the relevant target account.

To cater for this, it is possible to define a default BS export code for each segment of the GL account string that you configure. If defined, the default export code will be used to populate the corresponding GL account string segment for a candidate-based BS transaction instead of populating the segment based on a value derived from the candidate record or the candidate office hierarchy. 

Wage Transaction Grouping Configuration

Wage transaction grouping allows you to determine the level of detail that is to be exported by a Finance Integration wages export. Depending on the level of financial reporting that you organisation requires, you may want to export all individual wage transactions or you may want to group the transactions to avoid exporting an extremely large volume of data. Therefore, before you perform a wages export you must configure the required wage transaction grouping.

The wage transaction grouping must include the account to which transactions are to be posted and each GL account segment that is mapped. The grouping may also include GL account segment hierarchy levels that are not mapped. However, these can only be hierarchy levels that are below the lowest level of the hierarchy that is used in the GL account mapping, where the hierarchy levels are as follows (in order from highest to lowest):

• Company

• Country

• Brand

• Region

• Office

• Skill Group

• Keyword

• Staff. 

For example, the table below shows a sample GL account mapping. 

In the example above, Office is the lowest account segment hierarchy level that is used in the GL account mapping. Therefore, Skill Group, Keyword and Staff, which exist below Office in the hierarchy, will be available as optional wage transaction grouping options.

The wage transaction grouping can also include the following optional levels (in order from highest to lowest):

• Transaction Type

• Pay Batch

• Period End Date

• Payment Date

• Transaction Item Date

• Job Order.

Therefore, given the GL account mapping shown in the example above, the full set of wage transaction grouping options available would be as follows:

• Account (mandatory)

• Company (mandatory)

• Office (mandatory)

• Region (mandatory)

• Skill Group

• Keyword

• Staff

• Transaction Type

• Pay Batch

• Period End Date

• Payment Date

• Transaction Item Date

• Job Order.

Note that the order of the options will determine the order in which transactions will be sorted in the export file. For example, in the list above Transaction Item Date is before Job Order and therefore transactions will be sorted by transaction date first and and then by job order number.

Grouping Examples

The table below shows some examples of the combination of grouping options that could be selected and describes the resulting grouping of transactions.