The Pendulum General Ledger System performs the general ledger accounting and financial reporting for the firm from transactions created by the other Pendulum Systems. While many general ledger systems require that you purchase additional software to prepare financial reports, the Pendulum System includes an integrated financial report writer. This powerful tool permits you to design custom financial and budget reports. Cash, accrual or dual-basis accounting is also supported in this system.

General Ledger Transactions

Journal entries can be entered directly in the General Ledger System with on-line validation of account coding. In addition, the system automatically prepares general ledger entries to record the following items:

• Revenue and cash receipt transactions from the Time and Billing System.
• Expense and cash disbursement transactions from the Accounts Payable System.
• Recurring (standard) journal entries in the General Ledger System.
• Reversing journal entries for accruals in the General Ledger System.

Transaction Source Identification

User-defined transaction source codes identify the source of all general ledger transactions. Source codes can be flagged to provide special processing features including:

1. Automatic reversal to identify accrual entries to be automatically reversed in the following period.
2. Year-to-date entry to post a transaction to the year-to-date account balance without affecting the current period activity.
3. Closing entry to post a transaction to the year-end, closing account balance without affecting the reported amounts for the final accounting period.

Audit Trails

Each transaction is clearly identified for audit purposes.

• A transaction source code identifies the type and source of the transaction.
• A reference number provides a direct audit trail to the original document.
• A 75-character description permits additional identification of each transaction.
• General ledger entries from the Time and Billing System include the client and project numbers as well as the abbreviated client name.
• General ledger entries from the Accounts Payable System include the vendor number and abbreviated vendor name.
• A trace feature permits displaying the originating transaction in the Time and Billing or Accounts Payable System. This feature is especially useful for identifying the supporting transactions for a summary entry in the general ledger.

Interactively Display Account Balances!

Select any account and display the activity and balances. Double click an account to view the transactions for a single period or for the entire year. Drill down to view the originating transaction in the Pendulum Time and Billing or Accounts Payable System.

Budgeting

Budget amounts can be recorded in the general ledger system and included on financial reports or displayed on graphs.

• Multiple sets of budgets can be entered for each year permitting you to save and report an initial financial plan as well as revised monthly and quarterly budgets.
• External data such as average financial amounts for similar firms can be recorded and included on financial reports for comparison.
• Budgets are identified by year permitting you to develop, enter and print next year’s budget while continuing to report the current year’s budget on financial statements.
• Budgets can easily be copied to create new budgets. This feature is especially useful for creating revised budgets for the current year or an initial financial plan for the next year without affecting the original budget amounts.

Prepare Graphs in Seconds!

Graphs provide an effective means of highlighting financial trends. The graphing feature in the Pendulum General Ledger System permits you to display and print graphs of general ledger balances and budget amounts for any selected accounts.

Accounting Reports

The following types of basic accounting reports are preformatted for ease of use. All reports can be displayed or printed.

• Trial balances are available to report account balances sequenced by office or by account number. Optionally, balances can be consolidated by account number.
• Ledgers can include general ledger transactions for any range of accounting periods including the entire year. Separate ledgers can be printed for each department if desired. An account analysis can be printed for any selected account. Since general ledger transactions and balances can be retained for an unlimited number of years, ledgers can be printed for any year. Transactions can be summarized for selected accounts to reduce the size of printed ledgers. Since the detailed transactions remain in the database, this option can be changed at any time.
• Transaction journals can be printed for any selected type of transaction and for any range of accounting periods.

Financial Reports

The Pendulum General Ledger System includes an integrated Financial Report Manager enabling users to easily design financial and budget reports. Once a report is defined, it appears on a report listing and can be printed or displayed for any selected accounting period. Significant features of the Financial Report Manager include:

• Unlimited number of user-defined financial report formats.
• User-defined report titles, column headings and footnotes.
• User-defined fonts to control the appearance of your reports.
• Up to 20 user-defined columns on each report for general ledger and budget amounts from any selected accounting periods and years.
• Calculated columns to provide totals of other columns or differences between columns.
• User-defined percentages with a range of decimal positions.
• Optional rounding of dollar amounts.
• Hidden columns to provide data for computations without being printed on the report.
• Spreadsheet type reports with amounts for each month in separate columns.
• Unlimited number of rows on each report with user-defined titles, line spacing, page control, column underlines and dollar signs for each row.
• Multiple accounts selected and grouped on any row. These accounts need not be contiguous in the chart of accounts.
• Rows sequenced independent of the account numbering sequence.
• Unlimited number of user-defined heading and total rows.
• User-defined sign reversals to provide a conventional financial report presentation rather than credit balances appearing as negative numbers.
• Multiple offices printed as separate reports or as individual columns on a single report.
• Offices can be grouped by region to provide financial reporting by region and office.
• Amounts from multiple offices easily consolidated to create a single, firm-wide report.
• Supporting schedules formatted to provide the detail for summarized amounts on accompanying reports.

Data Exporting

General ledger and budget amounts can be exported in a variety of formats including Excel and Lotus spreadsheets for further analysis.