“Alias” in Analytical Accounting

Hi all

Wish you all a wonderful new year and may the new year brings in joy, prosperity, happiness and satisfaction to all of you.

Today, lets have a sneak peek into a little functionality in Analytical Accounting, which I believe would benefit many people using Analytical Accounting for the purpose of their analysis reports.

As all of you are aware, during transaction entry, we enter the transaction dimension codes in the analytical accounting window as we enter the transactions. When the analytical accounting window opens, the focus of the cursor is placed in the Alias field. Most of the users generally transfer the focus into the Transaction Dimension code in the scroll window below and start entering the dimension codes relevant for the specific distribution line. I have even seen requirements coming from users to write a simple customization to shift the focus into the dimension code field when the analytical window opens up. This negates the whole purpose of the Alias field. Lets analyze it a little on this.

If there is just one transaction dimension defined in the system, it might not be a big issue. But assume the case where there are many transaction dimensions defined and we need to enter values for each of these dimensions for every distribution line of a transaction. It definitely becomes a cumbersome and a lengthy process. This is where the Alias comes into effect and can drastically improve the efficiency in the way the analytical accounting window is used in transactions.

The Alias Maintenance window opens from Cards >> Financial >> Analytical Accounting >> Alias.

Once we specify the alias name and tab off, the system displays all the dimensions defined in the system in the scrolling window below. The user can then specify the dimension code (if applicable) for the dimensions listed on the scrolling window. We can define as many alias with as many combinations of the dimension codes. We can copy existing alias into a new one (or) we can also import the alias information from an excel file which has been setup in the required format.

The format of the excel file should be as shown below.

Once all the required aliases have been defined, we can use them at the transaction level. When the Analytical Accounting window is opened for the distribution lines, the focus is at the Alias field. We can enter the appropriate alias manually (or) selected from the lookup. Once the alias has been picked up, the application defaults all the dimension codes setup in the alias for the specific distribution line.

This way, we can also speed up the data entry time for entering dimension codes and also make sure that the probability of errors is minimized since the dimension codes are pre-defined in the alias and once the alias is picked up correctly, the dimension codes are defaulted for the distribution line.

This is a really cool functionality which I have noted in Analytical Accounting and I have decided to share it with you folks. I hope this tip is helpful for many people who are actively using analytical accounting to track multi-dimensional information.

Until next post…