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Account Groups

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Account Groups are used to define sets of General Ledger Account Id's for use in assumption calculations and cost roll-ups. Although Account Groups are generally user-defined, there are a few groups required by the System in order to function properly. Account Groups and their associated properties are viewed and defined in the Assumptions tab of the main window.

The term "Account" generally refers to the General Ledger Account element of the Budget Element String.

This term may have a different name based on how your Accounting system is set up and the Element Configuration of ESP™.

In many public sector organizations, the General Ledger Account element is referred to as an "Object".

Assumptions Tab - Account Groups

Name

Description

System

Salary Accounts

This Account Group contains all the Accounts subject to Employment Fixed Cost Calculations, and is used in configuring Calculated Assumptions.

Salary Roll-up Accounts

During the Scenario Recalculation employee salary costs are "Rolled-Up" to the Financial Budget before calculating Employee Fixed Costs. Only Employee salaries whose active funding BES contains an account in this group will be included in the Roll-up.

This Account Group is different from the Salary Accounts group in that, it may not be desirable to have all employee salaries roll-up to the Financial Budget. Examples would be substitute and temporary employees which are frequently lump sum budgeted. For employees' costs that are lump sum budgeted, as long as they are budgeted with an Account contained in the Salary Accounts group, employee Fixed Costs will be calculated on those amounts.

Inflation Roll-up Accounts

During the Scenario recalculation you can calculate the impact of inflation on a specific set of Accounts. When calculating Inflation an Adjustment Session is created behind the scenes with an Adjustment for each Budget Element String containing any Account in this Account Group.

Smart Account Groups

Smart Account Groups are used to limit the available Accounts based on a specific Fund Id.

An example of how Smart Account Groups can be used is the "Fund Revenue" groups used for Grant Administration fee calculations. Because the specific allowable Account Id's vary by Fund, each fund that allows Revenue Accounts to be created will need to have a "Fund Revenue" Smart Account Group which contains the allowable Account Id's. The structure of the "Fund Revenue" Account Group is "Fund Revenue: 205", where 205 is the fund that group applies to. When adding Budget Element Strings, the contents of the Account Id drop-down list will contain only the Accounts contained in the group.

Custom Account Groups

As Calculated Factors are defined, other Account Groups can be created to specifically identify Accounts that should be included in the calculations.

Property	Description
Name	Name of the Account Group. Protected Account Group names cannot be edited. There is a special entry in the drop-down list of Account Groups called Fund Revenue which will define a group as a Smart Account Group.
Active	Inactive Account groups cannot be selected as a source for Calculations, and will not Calculate inflation if the Account Group is an Inflation Group.
Smart Group	When configured and Active only the Accounts contained in this group will be available when adding a new Budget Item and the Fund Element of the new Budget Item matches the Fund Id specified for the group.
Fund Id
Inflation Group	When checked, this group will have inflation calculated for the Budget Items.
Inflation Factor	Primary, fixed inflation percentage entered as a decimal e.g. .032 =3.2%
General Fund	Toggles if the inflation group calculation will apply to the General Fund.
BESM Include	Budget Element String Mask to include specific Elements
BESM Exclude	Budget Element String Mask to exclude specific Elements
Description	Description of the Account Group