General Ledger

Option to sort A/R and A/P reports by customer name
A new prompt has been added to the Printer Overrides window to let you change the sort on the A/R & A/P schedules printed from Audit Reporting.  To print these reports, an authorized user can take the following steps:

1. Take option 34=Audit Reporting from the General Ledger menu and take option 1=Select by Accounts Receivable or Accounts Payable.
2. Take any of the print options such as 5=Detail Standard or 7=Control Summary and set Sort by Customer Name = Y.
3. Press [ENTER] to print.

Change: Previously these reports sorted only by customer number or vendor number.
Benefit: Simplifies the search for customer or vendor balances on the report when the customer number is not known.

Option to output factory financial statement to a text file
A new option has been added to the Factory Financials Statements screen that lets you send your financial statement to a text file on your local PC.  The file format is compatible with NCM Associates and can be transmitted directly to them for analysis or used for your own purposes.

To use this feature, an ftp server must be installed on your local PC.  For help with this, please contact ARKONA Customer Support.  Once the ftp server is ready, an authorized user can take the following steps:

1. Take option 35=Report to Outside Parties from the General Ledger menu and take option 1=Select by Factory Financial.
2. Key in the month/year you want to run the financial for and press [ENTER].
3. Take option 21=Download Text by page 1 and wait for the confirmation message.
• It is not necessary to download additional pages. 
• Once the program finishes, all pages will appear in the text file on your local PC or the text file will be available on the destination ftp site.

Change: New line option added to screen.
Benefit: Allows ARKONA customers to participate more fully in the NCM Associates 20 Group financial analysis.

Financial Analysis retains selected date during month-end rollover
The dates selected as part of the column headings in Financial Analysis will no longer automatically advance to the next month when the month changes.  As always you can use function F21=Month+1 to advance the report.

Benefit: You can now store views of reports for specific dates in the past.

General ledger inquiry by reference number
A new inquiry tool has been added to the General Ledger application that lets you search for transactions by reference number.  Along with this tool, we have kept all of the important functionality of 1=G/L, 5=Source, and 9=Notes available on the other general ledger inquiry tools.  To access this tool, an authorized user can take the following steps:

1. Take option 31=Inquiry from the General Ledger menu and take option 1=Select by Reference Inquiry.
2. Key in the reference number in the Position To field and hit [FIELD EXIT] and [ENTER] to display all of the transactions with that reference number.

Benefit: Quickly find documents when only the reference number is known.

General ledger inquiry by amount
A new inquiry tool has been added to the General Ledger application that lets you search for transactions by dollar amount.  Along with this tool, we have kept all of the important functionality of 1=G/L, 5=Source, and 9=Notes available on the other general ledger inquiry tools.  To access this tool, an authorized user can take the following steps:

1. Take option 31=Inquiry from the General Ledger menu and take option 1=Select by Amount Inquiry.
2. Key in the dollar amount in the Position To field and hit [FIELD EXIT] for a positive dollar amount or [FIELD-] for a negative dollar amount and press [ENTER] to display all of the transactions with that dollar amount.

Benefit: Quickly find documents when only the amount of a transaction is known.

Ford warranty credit memo import
A new function has been added to the Ford Factory Communications application that will create general ledger transactions for the warranty credit memo.  Option 7=Create G/L will read the information from the warranty credit memo and create a set of journal entries for your review.  You can approve the transactions as is, or modify them to prepare for posting and then post them to the general ledger. 

It is important to note that the because of the constraint of the Ford REACT server limiting the repair order number to 6 digits, a cross reference file must be built between the ARKONA repair order number and the Ford REACT repair order number.  The cross-reference file is built automatically each time you enter option 10=Warranty Submission from the Service Department menu.  Initially the warranty credit memo import function will be creating general ledger transactions for repair orders that were submitted to Ford before the cross reference file was built.  These transactions will have the Ford REACT repair order number as the control number and you will need to change them to the ARKONA repair order number before posting.  This will be as simple as calling the line down and adding the first digit to the control number.

To create a transaction set from the Ford warranty credit memo, an authorized user can take the following steps after some initial setup:

1. Take option 25=Factory Communications from the Service Department menu to display the Manufacturer Reports screen.
2. Position to the warranty credit memo by paging down or by keying in the manufacturer and report type at the top.
3. Take option 7=Create GL by the report to create the transactions and display them on the screen.
4. Modify the transactions as you would in 21=Enter Transactions on the General Ledger menu.
5. Use function 10=Post to post the transactions to the general ledger.

There is some setup that must be done before the transactions will create properly.  To set up the application, an authorized user can take the following steps:

1. Take option 6=DCS Definition from the System Environment menu and key in FD in the Manf field and press [ENTER].
2. Key in the Warranty Claims GL account number.  This is your warranty receivables account.
3. Key in the Accounts Payable GL account number.  This is the account that will receive the credit for the warranty payment.
4. Key in the vendor number that will control the credit to payables for the warranty payment.  This is typically your ARKONA DMS number for Ford.
5. Press [ENTER] to save.

Also, a user must be authorized to create general ledger transactions to use this function.  To give a user rights to create general ledger transactions using this new function, the dealership ARKONA Security Officer can take the following steps:

1. Take option 7=User Security from the System Environment menu to display the user IDs.
2. Position to the user and take option 2=Change by the user name to display the User Security – Application Authorization screen.
3. Take option 2=Application Options by General Ledger.
4. Set Authorize to Enter Transactions = Y and press [ENTER] to save.

Benefit: Accurately and automatically creates the warranty credits and posts them to the general ledger by repair order number to reconcile the warranty receivable account.

Option to include journals in reconditioning cost
A new field has been added to journals in the General Ledger Application Environment to specify whether transactions from that journal should be counted as reconditioning cost rather than cost of sale when clearing the vehicle inventory account during the process of capping a deal.

To specify that transactions in inventory be counted as reconditioning in a certain journal, take the following steps:

1. Take option 50=Application Environment from the General Ledger menu and take option 1=Select by Journals.
2. Take option 2=Change by a journal and set Include in Recon Cost = Y.
3. Press [ENTER] to save.

Change: Previously, journals PCA, PCC, PCD, and SVI were automatically included.
Benefit: Provides flexibility in more accurately computing reconditioning cost between dealerships.