About Posting Groups

You assign business posting groups to customers and vendors. In the Gen. Business Posting Groups window, you enter a code and a description for the posting group.

When setting up business groups, you must consider:

• How many groups you need for breaking down sales by customers.

• How many groups you need for breaking down purchases by vendors.

The business groups can be set up to group customers and vendors by geographical area (Domestic, EU Countries/Regions, Overseas, and so on) or the type of business (retail, industrial, wholesale, service) or to distinguish between private entities and government agencies. The number of groups are directly related to the chart of accounts.

If you do not want to distinguish sales and purchases by customers or vendors, it is not necessary to set up any General Business Posting Groups.

You assign product posting groups to items and resources. In the Gen. Product Posting Groups window, you enter a code and a description for the posting group.

When setting up product groups, you must consider:

• How many groups you need for breaking down sales by products (items and resources).

• How many groups you need for breaking down purchases by items.

Examples of how Product Posting Groups can be divided are Raw Materials, Retail, Resources, Capacities, and so on. The Product Posting Groups provide the major product groups reflected in the Chart of Accounts. Each Inventory Item and Resource is assigned a Product Posting Group.

In the General Posting Setup window, for each combination of business and product posting groups, you can assign a different set of G/L accounts. As a result, it is possible to post the sale of the same item to different sales accounts in the G/L due to customers being assigned different business posting groups.

If using inventory, in addition to entering every possible combination of General Business and General Product Posting Groups, you should enter a line for each General Product Posting Group with a blank General Business Posting Group assigned. An instance when this combination is necessary is for posting activity from Item journals when there is not a Customer or Vendor assigned to the transaction.

Copying Posting Setup Lines

The more product and business posting groups you have, the more lines you see in the General Posting Setup window. This can mean a lot of data entry to set up the general posting setup for the company. While there may be many different combinations of business and product posting groups, different combinations may still post to the same G/L accounts. To limit the amount of manual entry, copy the G/L accounts from an existing line in the General Posting Setup window.

In the Customer Posting Groups window, you enter a code and a description for the posting group. This window defines which accounts are used when accounts receivable transactions are posted to your general ledger. Each customer must belong to a posting group because the customer's posting group tells the system where to post the transactions associated with that customer. You can create as many customer posting groups as you like.  

If you are using inventory in conjunction with receivables, the combination of General Business Posting Group assigned to your customers and the General Product Posting Group assigned to the Inventory item determine which accounts the Sales Order line entries post to in the General Ledger.

In the Vendor Posting Groups window, you enter a code and a description for the posting group. This window defines which accounts are used when accounts payable transactions are posted to your general ledger. Each vendor must belong to a posting group because the vendor's posting group tells the system where to post the transactions associated with the Payables accounts, Service Charge accounts, and Payment Discount accounts. You can create as many vendor posting groups as you like.  

If you are using inventory in conjunction with payables, the combination of General Business Posting Group assigned to your vendors and the General Product Posting Group assigned to the Inventory item determine which accounts the Purchase Order line entries post to in the General Ledger.

Inventory Posting Groups let you define the balance sheet Inventory Accounts for your various Items. In the Inventory Posting Groups window, you enter a code and a description for the posting group.

Each Item must have a General Product Posting Group and an Inventory Posting Group assigned to it. The item's posting groups tell the system where to post the transactions associated with that item.

Inventory Posting Groups also provide an ideal way to organize your inventory. When generating reports, you can separate items by their posting groups.

Inventory Posting Setup

After you have set up your inventory posting groups, you use the Inventory Posting Setup window to create links between Inventory Posting Groups, inventory Locations, and G/L accounts. When you post item-specified entries, the program posts to the G/L account set up for the combination of Inventory Posting Group and Location linked to the item. Note that the only two accounts initially required are Inventory Account and Inventory Account (Interim). The other accounts pertain to specific application areas you may or may not be using.

Bank Account Posting Groups are used to map a bank G/L account to a bank account in the program. To simplify tracing transactions and bank reconciliations, each Bank Account should be associated using a Posting Group to a unique General Ledger account.

Fixed Assets Posting Groups allow you to create links between fixed assets and the general ledger where general ledger integration is activated. Posting groups also facilitate groups of fixed assets for statistical purposes.

In the FA Posting Groups window, you must enter a code for each group of assets you want to work with.

• You specify the G/L account numbers needed for the different types of expenses and costs.

• You define the accounts for the acquisition costs, accumulated depreciation amounts, acquisition costs on disposal, accumulated depreciation on disposal, gains on disposal, losses on disposal, maintenance expenses, and depreciation expenses.

Please note that not all accounts are shown in the standard layout. To see all of the fields, click Posting Gr., Card to open the FA Posting Group Card window. On the General and Balancing Account tabs, you can see all of the account fields. The FA Posting Group Card window gives you a good overview of the account structure of the posting group. Each FA posting type can have more than one relation to a G/L account. In most cases, the same account is used for all kinds of depreciation. Only the acquisition cost account is different because it is connected with a VAT Posting Group.

In the VAT Business Posting Groups window, you set up VAT Business Posting Group to distinguish between the types of customers and vendors. You can use the VAT Business Posting Groups to determine calculation and posting of VAT, for example by specifying whether  the customer or vendor involved in the transaction is in an EU or non-EU country/region.

Before setting up VAT Business Posting Groups, you must decide how many different groups you need. This depends on a number of factors including local legislation and whether you trade both domestically and internationally.

On each customer and vendor card, you must enter the code that represents the group to which the customer or vendor belongs. In some situations, VAT is included in the price of goods and services on item or resource cards. In such situations, you must fill in a VAT Business Posting Group in the VAT Bus. Posting Gr. (Price) field for customers or vendors with whom you trade these goods and services.

In the VAT Product Posting Groups window, you set up VAT Product Posting Group to indicate the different VAT calculations needed for the types of items or resources you purchase or sell.

On each item and resource card, you must enter the VAT Product Posting Group code that represents the group to which the item or resource belongs.

In the VAT Posting Setup window, you determine to which accounts the program will post VAT.

The VAT Posting Setup consists of combinations of VAT Business Posting Groups and VAT Product Posting Groups. You can set up as many combinations as you need and link various G/L accounts to each combination. For each combination, you can fill in a VAT percent, VAT calculation type and account numbers for posting of VAT related to sales, purchases, and reverse charge VAT.

When you fill in a line in a general journal, purchase or sales line, the program checks the VAT Posting Setup window to see which accounts to use for this particular combination of VAT business posting group and VAT product posting group.