Carried Forward Accounting Updates

In the Secondary Update Questionnaire, in the box marked "Create new record?" (which is normally for updates or accounting updates if no record exists on the Chain) new value "C" for carried forward can be entered. This deals with a particular database design which has been used to great effect at some GV sites in the USA.

A common design of a summary balance file is:

   Summary Type (Area, Prod Group, Salesman etc)
   Period (CYM)
   Balance this Period

This design enables many years of summaries to be kept on line and purging can take place at any convenient time unlike the old "buckets" method. The down-side to this design is the amount of processing required to achieve basic information like comparing last years year to date figure in October compared to this year's year to date figure. Update of a file like this is straight forward with an accounting update with "create new record?" = Y.

A more useful design for this type of information is:-

   Summary Type (Area, Prod Group, Salesman etc)
   Period (CYM)
   Balance this Period
   Balance Year to Date
   Carried Forward Balance

This design gives more immediate information but there are problems in processing the creation of new records in that the balances have to be carried forward except for at year end where they have to be set to Zero.

By designing the file so that the fields have particular Classifications (Classes) and using the "Create new record?" = C , the carrying forward of balances is performed correctly , including the posting of credit notes into a previous balance. If you are interested in using this design technique, please contact Genesis for more detail.