21st Century Accounting Tutorials - Checklists

Setting up General Ledger

Use General Ledger commands to configure a new company and design your chart of accounts.

In the General Ledger/Configure/Company window that opens automatically, enter the company name, address, and contacts and review the special company accounts for retained earnings, income transfer, and deposit clearing. If you require password security for your company, assign a password.
Run General Ledger/Configure/Chart of Accounts.
- Click the Edit Structure button to create your account structure if you need additional segments representing departments (or whatever you call them in your company).
- Edit, rename, and create new accounts in your Chart of Accounts. Choose Replicate selected accounts from the right-click menu to automatically create departmental accounts.
Run General Ledger/Configure/Financial Calendar to customize your fiscal year for beginning and ending dates, number of fiscal periods, and so forth.
Now or at any time later, run General Ledger/Configure/Historical Balances to enter closing balances from your previous set of books. For complete comparative financial reports, enter as much historical data as you wish.
Now or at any time later, run General Ledger/Configure/Budgets if you want to maintain budgets for certain accounts and produce financial reports that compare projected account performance with actual activity.
Now or at any time later, run General Ledger/Configure/Custom Journals to create special custom journals for recording recurring types of business transactions that do not result in a bank deposit.
If you want to post periodic automatic entries, now or at any time later, run General Ledger/General Journal to create a batch of the entries you want to post periodically. Save the batch as a recurring batch. (Right-click the batch in the left pane and select Make Recurring from the options menu.)
You can run General Ledger/Configure/Financial Reports and General Ledger/Configure/Financial Report Templates at any time to create customized financial reports, if you require financial reporting other than the default financials provided by 21st Century Accounting.