Why Sales Analysis Reports Will Not Tie to the General Ledger
Solution ID = KB-340
Goal : Why Sales Analysis Reports Will Not Tie to the General Ledger. The Sales Analysis reports were never designed to tie to the General Ledger. We sometimes will get inquiries as to why this is so. Below is a detail explanation of why they do not.
Version = Syteline6.XX.XX
Module : SLACCT
Fact : CO
Cause
In order to understand this explanation, you will need Solution 62, "Sales Analysis Reports and Their Associated Data Files". As you see on this document, all Sales Analysis reports come from different files. These files usually follow different date criteria, and are updated at different times in the Order Entry process. For example, a Sales Analysis by Customer will not recognize an invoice as a sale until it is posted in A/R, while a Sales Analysis by Item recognizes the sale as soon as the invoice is printed in Order Entry.These reports also by design cannot tie to the General Ledger very well. Going back to the Sales Analysis document, there are 4 reports that use the customer file. That means it is using the Sales PTD and YTD in the Customer Maintenance Pay History. These figures are not date intensive, meaning it gets updated until the A/R Period End utility is run. If that utility is not run exactly before A/R posting at the first of the month, the figures are inaccurate. Since the General Ledger figures are based on date, it is difficult to tie a non-date intensive figure to the General Ledger. The same can be said reports that use the sale-sum file. This file is a running totals file, and while it is more date intensive than the customer file it still doesn't have the detail necessary to tie back to the Ledger. The sale-sum is more accurate that customer, but still not reconcilable.
Any report using co-ship will usually not tie to the sales account, but can tie to the Cost of Goods Sold Account. The sales account is not updated in the General Ledger until the invoice is posted in A/R, co-ship reports use ship dates. A shipping transaction hits the Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold account, but never affects the sales account. Reports using co-ship, itemwhse, or co-item cannot reconcile with the G/L because manual Invoices, Debit, or Credit memos entered in A/R will not show on these reports. Manual A/R invoices are not written to any of these files. So all that is left is inv-hdr. This file does tie with the G/L very well. That is because they both use the same date, and are updated at the same time. The Invoice Register by design is really the only report that should tie with the General Ledger, although in many cases the Customer By Ship-to also will.
So, if all these reports cannot tie into anything, why use them? The original intent of the Sales Analysis reports was to provide sales figures in different formats. For most customers, sales departments usually need rough figures of sales by product code, by item, by customer, and by salesperson, as well as other miscellaneous formats. These reports meet that purpose. The ledger file does not store data in these formats, so it is extremely difficult to provide reports that show figures for different categories that can tie to the General Ledger.
