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How you structure your general ledger will depend on your institution’s business practices. You may also follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and recommendations from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

Campus Cafe is flexible, containing the ability to create cost centers, accounts, funds and projects.

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Campus Cafe account number format

The general ledger account number is comprised of four components.

1. Fund (has its own balance sheet)

2. GL account (object code)

3. Department (functional area)

4. Cost Center

Note the project expense tracking (PET) number isn’t part of the general ledger number.

Set a department style

To make entry faster, only the cost center and GL account are entered or selected. The fund and the department are derived based on the other components entered.

The department can be represented (derived) by the first one or the first two positions of the cost center number. This allows up to 9 departments (functional areas) with up to 999 cost centers or up to 99 functions (functional areas) with up to 99 cost centers. This choice is made using a custom control.

Set department style:

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter YG200A

3. Click the pencil.

4. In Parameter Value 1 enter A or B and click Save.
   
   A value of A will produce the first structure, and a value of B will produce the latter. The default value is B, which is recommended because it allows more flexibility in the number of functions.

Example, using the default value B, you might have the following cost centers:

Example, using the value A, you might have the following cost centers:

Define default funds for cost centers

The fund is derived based on the the cost center. If the cost center is less than 10, then the fund number will be the same as the cost center. If the cost center is greater than 10, the fund will default to 1, which is usually the current operating fund.

You may have a fund structure that looks like the below.

Generally, this means that a break down by cost center is required only in the current fund. There may be a need to have cost center breakdowns within other funds such as the temporary restricted or endowment fund. For example, these could be used to track various endowment funds.

You can accomplish the above by configuring custom controls to assign default funds to ranges of cost centers.

1. Go to Admin > Custom Control.

2. In Search enter GLFUND_MA.

3. Next to Seq Num 1, Parm 1, click the pencil.

4. In Parameter Value 1 enter the cost center number followed by a colon followed by the first cost center number, a dash then the last cost center number. For example, if you entered 2:8000-8999 then fund 2 would be the default fund for any cost center between 8000-8999.

5. In Parameter Value 2 enter the next default fund and cost centers associated with it. For example, if you wanted fund 3 to be associated with cost centers 9000 to 9999, you’d enter 3:9000-9999.

6. Click Save.