Overview
The QBO3 accounting module manages accounting information. While not a full-blown accounting system, the module's Ledger tables can easily be used to track accounting data, and can be configured by power users to do some pretty powerful things.
Real-world use cases include:
- Tracking borrower financials for a collections or loss mitigation system
- Tracking vendor fees and costs
- Tracking data costs associated with execution of a business process (e.g. ordering credit reports, etc.)
- Tracking total debt associated with a mortgage
Classes
The accounting module comprises the following classes:
- Ledger: a ledger represents an invoice or similar financial statement
- Ledger Item: a ledger item represents a line item within a ledger
- Ledger Template: a template that determines the behavior of a Ledger (repeatability, how to generate an invoice document, etc.)
- Ledger Template Item: determines the behavior of a Ledger Item (repeatability, whether it can be edited, included in a ledger's total, etc.)
Templates
In addition to supporting extranet and repeatability, QBO3 Ledger Templates also support the following:
- Expandable - Allows for the ability to add items on the fly or leave the ledger locked down to the items supplied with the template.
- Locked - Locks the amount values supplied when the ledger is created.
- Refresh On Insert - Pre-populates the ledger items with mapped values (or default values) when a ledger is created.
- Calculate Method - Object based statement or method that is used to populate the ledger item values.
- Project Method - Object based statement or method that is used to project the ledger item values.
- Custom Types - a power user defined enumeration used to populate the Type drop down when editing a Ledger
- Custom Statuses - a power user defined enumeration used to populate the Status drop down when editing a Ledger
- Item Types - a power user defined enumeration used to populate the Type drop down when editing a Ledger Items
- Item Statuses - a power user defined enumeration used to populate the Status drop down when editing a Ledger Items
- Invoice Template - an Attachment Template used to generate an invoice document (usually a PDF) for a ledger
- Invoice Matrix - a matrix that includes an Attachment Template output to soft-code the invoice document template to use
Ledger items are also template based and additionally support the following:
- Use In Projections - Can the item be used in future projections.
- Manual Insert - Determines if the item should always be included with the ledger.
- Is Debit - Default value is Credit.
- Is Totaled - Used to determine if the item should be included in the ledger total.
- Is Locked - Locks the amount values supplied when the ledger is created.
- Can Exclude - Allows the item to be excluded on the fly.
- Can Refresh - Allows the item to be updated with the calculated values.
There are three key ways billing ledgers can be supported in QBO3:
- Ledgers with item amounts populated by the user.
- Ledgers with item amounts populated by the object summary.
- Ledgers with items that are child ledgers.
Automated Calculations
The Ledger/Calculate method iterates through each item in a ledger, calling calculate on each item, and storing the sum of each item in the Ledger.Balance column. There are three scenarios that are considered when calculating an item:
Scenario 1: Simple Items
With a "simple" item in a ledger, the item's amount is added to the ledger's balance (a straight forward sum). For example, assume we have:
| Item | Amount | Is Totaled | Notes |
| Item 1 | 125.00
| Yes | |
| Item 2 | 100.00
| Yes | |
| Item 3 | 50.00
| No | |
| Balance | 275.00
|
| This is the simple SUM of all items |
| Adjusted Balance | 225.00
|
| Item 3 is ignored. |
Scenario 2: Nested Items
A ledger item may point to a nested (child) ledger, in which case, calling calculate will call calculate on the nested ledger (recursively). For example, assume we have:
| Item | Amount | Is Totaled | Notes |
| Attorney Fees and Costs | 2157.55
| Yes | This may comprise another entire ledger, the items of which detail each fee or cost incurred. |
| Hard Costs | 1200.00
| Yes | This may comprise another ledger, the items of which detail each hard cost incurred. |
| Late Fee | 150.00
| Yes | |
| Balance | 275.00
|
| This is the simple SUM of all items |
| Adjusted Balance | 225.00
|
| Item 3 is ignored. |
Scenario 3: Matrix-based Items
In many use cases, there are complex rules that drive the calculation of a ledger item. In such a scenario, a power user may define a Matrix to determine the amount to populate into the ledger item.