Lines are the row/detail configuration of your Financial Report that will print down the left hand side of the final output. The line is where you’ll configure either a single General Ledger account or groups of General Ledger accounts based upon the criteria provided. If you imagine a basic Trial Balance, the lines of a Trial Balance correspond to single General Ledger account. The line setup of a Profit & Loss Statement would be an example of where you might use a multiple of General Ledger accounts.
The primary fields of the Line Designer are:
- Line # - This is an optional field, but recommended when wanting to reference the current line on another line within the formula configuration. Line #'s are recommended to start with an alpha-character and then a numeric counter. For example "A1" for the first line and "A2" for the second line. You may even want to number lines such as A10 or A20, in order for future handling where you may need to insert A11 as a new line in the middle.
Note: If line #'s are numeric only, this may cause issue with formula calculations. A value of "10" may be confused if you want to multiple a value by 10 at some point later. The system will be unable to decipher between "Line 10" or "the number 10". - Title - This is the text that will appear on the left most column of the report; describe what the line is for easy understanding by the end user.
- Summary Type - Primary options of "Formula" or "G/L Account"
- Formula - The Formula field will contain a mathematical equation.
- G/L Account" - The Formula field will contain selection criteria for whichever G/L Accounts you would like to use.
- Formula - The Formula field will contain a mathematical equation.
- Formula - Enter in either the equation of columns, or the criteria for G/L accounts you wish to select.
For more information on Formulas, either read Using GL Account Formulas or Using Mathematical Formulas.
Samples
Here are some sample screenshot of different line configurations (click image to expand):
