Medical Teams IT Service Desk

HOW TO: EXTRACT A GENERAL LEDGER (GL) REPORT FROM UBW (BASIC).

The GL Report provides information on transactions that have either been posted to the GL or are in the process of being approved prior to being posted.  They also form the basis of trial balances which are basic but critical report that checks whether credits equal debits over the course of a period (or periods).

There are two main ways to create a GL report: adapting an existing report or creating a new report from scratch. Adapting a report from scratch is the fastest and simplest way to extract GL information.  This note outlines the steps involved in running or adapting an existing report from the Web; refer to

HOW TO: EXTRACT A GENERAL LEDGER (GL) REPORT FROM UBW (ADVANCED) for tips on creating a GL Report from scratch on the Web version of UBW or creating one on Desktop.

NOTE: There are two types of Reports in UBW:

9. Enquiries can be created and modified dynamically by users using specially designed screen-based searches. Browsers are special enquiries that affords even more flexibility and power to advanced users to retrieve and manipulate data. Both types of enquiries provide users the ability to determine both the search criteria and the columns that are returned.
10. Standard reports are preexisting standing reports that provide users only a limited ability to change the search criteria (typically dates and periods).  They provide no ability to choose which columns are shown in the report.

METHOD:

To create a report as quickly as possible, carry out the following steps:

1. Determine what information your report should provide.  This involves identifying the fields (columns) that will make up the report.  For a GL Extract these would typically include:
   1. Account Code
   2. Period (Month the transaction occurred or relates to)
   3. Cost Centre (Dim_1)
   4. Project Code (Dim_2)
   5. Asset or ResourceID (Dim_3)
   6. Budget Line Code (Dim_4)
   7. Activity (Dim_5)
   8. Site Code (Dim_6)
   9. Text (Transaction Details)
   10. Transaction Types
       1. GL (General Ledger)
       2. RI (Invoices registered but not yet approved)
       3. PI (Posted Invoices)
       4. PP (Payroll Transactions)
       5. AT (Asset Transactions)
       6. RV (Reversals
   11. Amount (local UGX)
   12. Amount3 (USD equivalent)
2. Some fields in the underlying UBW database can be adapted to display different information depending on the account to which the transaction has been charged.  These fields are identified with either the “Dim” or “Cat” prefix and are listed in 1(a)-(h).  The underlying system field names are shown in brackets.   
3. Log in to UBW (Web) and navigate to the GL Enquiries via the Accounting menu which can be found listed in the Homescreen menu down the left-hand side of the screen. From there, navigate to the Enquiries section:

Alternatively you can navigate to the screen using the search criteria at the top right hand corner of the screen.

1. Using the Selection criteria section, enter the search values that can be used to narrow down the report output information as required.

1. The tickboxes on the right can be used to specify the transaction’s status:
   • Ticking on (A) returns transactions still in workflow
   • Ticking on (B) returns only Posted transactions
   • Ticking on (C) returns transactions that have been paid and matched off (ie transactions created from invoices).

1. In the Result, clicking on the hyperlinked items enables drill down to the underlying transactions

1. The Choose columns button enables the user to switch different columns on or off

1. The data from the report can be exported to Excel using the Export button
2. The Analyser button can be used to categorise, analyse and present the data in different ways.   In the image below, the transactions have been analysed by project code:

1. The new format can be saved as a template that can then be used repeatedly either by the creator or by colleagues:

POTENTIAL ISSUES & ERRORS

1. No results generated

Possible causes:

1. One or more of the codes in the Selection criteria section is invalid (ie don’t exist on the system)
2. The values do exist but not the particular combination entered in the Selection criteria
3. Data control: users may have access only to certain types of data, for example transactions related to Kampala may not be visible to users in the Mbarara office.