View General Ledger
Use the View General Ledger form to enquire on the General Ledger Accounts database. This is the same screen that loads when you choose GL Drilldown from Excel.
Form reference
Mode – Select Actual or Budget
Account – Select the account to view the detail for a specific general ledger account from the search field, leave blank for all accounts with balances.
Transaction Type – Select the type of transactions to see the general ledger account detail for – you can choose All transactions, All Debits, All Credits or all Quantities.
Period From Year – Enter the first year for which to display transactions.
From Period – Enter the first period for which to display transactions.
Period To Year – Enter the last year for which to display transactions..
Period To – Enter the last period for which to display transactions.
Search Filter – This field is filled when the drill down from Excel is performed. This field contains the filters used in the Excel cell on which drill down is performed.
Invert Sign – Select this option to invert the signs in the search.
Display Zero Balances – Select to retrieve zero balance accounts. If you select this option, the zero balance accounts are included in the display on the Balances tab. This can be useful if you just want a listing of all of the GL Accounts.
Formula – This field is filled when the drill down from Excel is performed. This field contains the formula used in the Excel cell on which drill down is performed.
Tree – Select the general ledger account tree to search on. Once selected, all the tree branches display. select the branches you want to search on.
Tree Branches – This field displays all the branches for the selected tree. Select the branches to search on. You can click the:
Select All button to select all of the tree branches.
Unselect All button to deselect all the tree branches so that none of them is selected for the search.
Budget – Select the budget to retrieve balances from. This is available if the mode is Budget
Click the Search Now button to retrieve Balances and transactions based on your selection criteria
Balances – This table displays the general ledger accounts using the criteria you entered on the form. The balance of each account displays.
Use this tab to select a general ledger account line and then view the transactions for this account on the Transactions tab.
Transactions table – This table displays the transactions for the general ledger account selected in the Balances table, using the selections you have made.
From either the Balances Tab or the Transactions tab you can send the table contents to Excel, i.e. right click on the table headings and you will see the options:
And the table will be sent to Excel. To the right hand side of the table you can also see all of the trees and branches that the accounts belong to, this can be quite useful if trying to see if any accounts are missing from a tree.
Not sure where to find trees? In GL Account Maintenance, you will find them on the Custom Tab:
If you have common uses for this you can also Save Criteria and Load Criteria, i.e.
Just watch the dates as this can be a trap if you forget to alter them each time you load the criteria. The other thing to note is that if you want to see balances for Balance Sheet accounts you must start from the period <Opening Balances> or you will only see the movement in the account. The above is an example of how to run a GL Trial Balance as at 31/10/2019.
Reconciliations
This can also be useful for GL Reconciliations, think Fixed Assets where you may have a GL Reporting Tree with Fixed Asset Branch/s, you can use the Tree to get a list of GL Codes and/or transactions for just these branches to reconcile to the sub-ledger.
For example, select a tree that contains the Fixed Asset accounts, then click Search Now:
In Fixed Assets run the Cost and Depreciation Movements report – note the highlighted selections:
Ensure the periods you are running the report for match what you have used View for. View gives us this:
And the FA report gives us:
This makes it very easy to tick off and find where the imbalance is – the totals should be equal, but there is an issue with Furniture and Fittings and Office Equipment that needs further investigation. From the View menu, you can also View the transactions to assist with the reconciliation process.
Deselect the accounts that match and just view the GL Transactions for the accounts that do not match:
Although as the Fixed Asset ledger is higher in the case of Furniture and Fittings, chances are there is an asset in the FA Ledger that is not in the right place in GL – the Fixed Asset clearing account is normally the first place to look if this is the case, so rerun the FA Cost and Depreciation report and look at the asset category in detail to see if you can spot it. Sure enough, it shows up:
Then you just need to look further into what might have happened here. As for the 10cents on the other account, you can do a journal to correct it. Otherwise, you'll spend more time finding it than is worthwhile.