Data Source and Update Schedule
Overview
The Cal Answers General Ledger Reporting (GLR) dashboard contains campus-wide financial data from the campus general ledger, Berkeley Financial System (BFS).
Use this dashboard to research transactions from the general ledger including actuals, authorized budget amounts, and encumbrances.
The GLR dashboard displays data in accounting (debit/credit) signage, with credits typically being negative and debits typically being positive.
Related Dashboards
- The Multi-Year Reporting dashboard delivers the same data, except as its name implies, you can generate data for multiple years when you want to look at trends.
- The Financial Management Reporting (FMR) dashboard has general ledger data presented in Financial Statement signage with credits typically being positive and debits typically being negative values. It is useful for comparing with plan data in CalPlanning.
Reports in the dashboard
Compensation by Accounting Period
General Ledger Summary
General Ledger Summary is an interactive summary level report with information from the BFS general ledger, based on the applied filter selections. The default view provides information at the Account Category level. You can click a linked summary value to drill down to the individual transactions included in the summary value.
General Ledger Detail
General Ledger Detail displays each individual transaction based on the applied filter selections. After each monthly close, use this report to verify every transaction that posted to your general ledger as part of your key controls monitoring. The Document ID will help you find a given transaction in BFS if there needs to be an update or correction.
By Accounting Period
By Accounting Period presents all accounts by Account Category in a monthly format for trend analysis. Use this report to track spending throughout the fiscal year and discover the seasonality of your financial activities.
Compensation By Accounting Period
Compensation by Accounting Period presents compensation related expenses in a monthly format, for tracking and reconciling payroll activity as posted to the BFS General Ledger. Use this report to verify that payroll correctly posted in each Accounting Period throughout the year. Use the Expanded view to see the Dept ID, Fund, CF1 and CF2 (chartstrings) used for each employee.
Prior Vs Current
Prior vs Current contains two reports: a summary report on top and a detail report below. They work in tandem: select a range of accounting periods within a fiscal year, and the reports will provide the prior/beginning amounts, the current amounts and the remaining balance/grand total at the end of your selected range of periods. This is an excellent report to use for C&G funds, to discover activities that impacted the balance during selected periods of time. The upper report summarizes the Prior Budget & Actuals Amounts and the Current (selected) Budget and Actuals amounts. The lower report, called Actuals Detail, allows you to see the individual transactions.
Encumbrances
Encumbrances displays all encumbrances included in the filter selections. Use this report to review purchase order activity. You can click on a Purchase Order Number to drill to the Procure to Pay Operations (BearBuy) dashboard for more information on that purchase order.
Transaction Verification
Transaction Verification displays all transactions that originated OUTSIDE the selected Org(s). Use this report to verify all transactions that did not originate in your unit(s). For example, if you are in the Law School and you select Org Level3 SCLAW, you will see all transactions that were processed by units that do not roll up to SCLAW. Compensation Expenses are centrally processed, so they are always included in this report. In many cases, you will want to set the filter Account Group to only Non-Compensation Expenses.
Data Dictionary
General Ledger Reporting Data Dictionary
Articles
When to use Financial Management vs. General Ledger vs. Multi-Year Reporting dashboards
Data Source and Update Schedule
The dashboard receives data updates from the campus general ledger, Berkeley Financial System (BFS), each night.