The core of any financial system is the ledger structure.  It is for this reason that Gillani Financials has a specialized accounting structure known as the GL FlexKey.  This powerful structure allows a company to define its accounting reports in the GL FlexKey.

The simplest way of looking at the GL FlexKey is to view it as an embellished account number.  Gillani Financials allows you to define specific sections within the FlexKey according to the reporting needs of your organization.  These sections can be defined around the physical locations within your company and/or around the department codes or management of functions.  Part of the FlexKey will always be your natural account number.

Once defined, the GL FlexKey provides the basis upon which you can drill down to find individual entries that make up values in specific accounts.  It helps make reporting simple, by easily defining what you would like to rollup into specific accounts.

While the GL FlexKey can appear to be a complex entity to work with, the concept of FlexKey Alias makes its use quite easy.  The alias can be viewed as a shortcut name for the GL FlexKey.  Much as you might refer to my home address as John’s place, a GL FlexKey alias allows you to create an easy to use reference for the GL FlexKey.

Critical to any financial product is the ability to interface to systems that can either provide or use data from your system.  Gillani Financials does that in many ways.

The General Ledger module allows for the import or export of individual journal entries.  In addition, the use of EDI structures allows for the exchange of data using that data structure.

Gillani Financials General Ledger gives your accounting personnel the following advantages:

• Custom defined Accounting Structures
• Powerful Financial Management Reporting
  
• Drill downs or roll ups of Journal transactions
  
• Manual entry or Importing of Journal entries
  
• Tracking of multiple Journal types
  
• Budgeting

The Accounts Receivable function enables you to:

• Manage customer information
• Maintain customer catalogs
• Make powerful queries into customer accounts
• Automate the collection from bad debt accounts
• Quickly generate dunning letters
• Select a wide variety of invoicing/statement options
• Manage bank deposits and bank account activity
• Make use of electronic payments, EDI interfaces
• Handle credits, returns, payment transfers, NSF checks
• Customize tracking of invoice agings
• Import lockbox payments from banks
• Easily apply cash or credits to invoices
• Automate multilevel tax calculations

Account Payable will be more productive with the ability to make use of: 

• Contracted rates of exchange
• Batch processing of check runs
• Realized/Unrealized currency gains/losses
• Importing of invoices from foreign sources
• Multiple check stocks per account
• Multiple bank accounts per bank
• Power vendor inquiries
• Improved vendor controls
• Invoice matching to purchasing and receiving
• Bank account reconciliation
• Enhanced tax processing ability
• 1099 processing
• Electronic payment systems

Before using any of these programs to begin entering data and setting up your fixed assets, you should first spend considerable time planning how best to use this module. Among some of the decisions that should be carefully considered are the designs for the Location FlexKeys, the types of depreciation books, depreciation methods that will be used, and which parameters to use as module level defaults.

The Fixed Assets module requires two setup processes: 

- Organization setup and 

- Fixed Assets module setup. 

Setup needs to be performed once for each database.

Organization Setup
Organization setup information affects all iDistribute modules. Before you can use Fixed Assets, the  the Setup information for the module needs to be entered. Setup includes defining information such as depreciation books, depreciation methods, and short years. 

Organization setup includes the following:

· Global Parameters
· Fiscal and System Calendars
· Account Types
· GL FlexKey structures, segments, validations, and aliases
· Reconciliation Codes 
· Interbook Accounts
· Multilevel Tax Groups
· Multicurrency

The Budget Manager shows budget information in a spreadsheet format that gives you the ability to create many different types of budgets, with as much or as little detail as you need. In addition, you can bring the actual data from the general ledger into a spreadsheet program for analysis and revision. Security can be added to your budgets to prevent unauthorized users from viewing or tampering with the data.

Enterprise’s budgeting feature encompasses two different modules: General Ledger and Budget Manager. At some phases of the budgeting process, you use General Ledger; at other phases, you use Budget Manager.

For example, although the budget is created and posted using the General Ledger, in the interim you can use Budget Manager, to import the data to a spreadsheet. 

Here are some of the budgeting methods that are supported by the budgeting feature:

- Top-Down Budgeting. The budgeting feature allows you to increase or decrease the base figures taken from the general ledger by a given percent. The budget is then divided according to the responsibility segments that you designate, and the figures are distributed down to the appropriate manager or department head. After each manager receives their portion of the budget and makes the necessary adjustments, the budget data is checked back into the module for final approval before posting.

- Bottom-Up Budgeting. You can take the opposite approach to your budgeting and distribute the base figures directly to your departments and responsibility centers: when the managers finish entering their budget figures, the data is easily transferred back to the budgeting program.

- Straight Budgeting. Instead of extracting the base figures from the general ledger, you can enter an established set of budget dollar amounts and GL FlexKeys into the Budget Account Definition window. During the Budget Rollup, these figures are automatically distributed across the number of periods in your budget, and can be posted directly to the appropriate ledger and journal.

Credit Manager supplements the Accounts Receivable and Order Entry modules by presenting information in ways that meet the needs of credit representatives. Credit Manager provides essential customer and credit information and includes customer communication tools.
Credit Manager presents customer information in a format specifically for use in evaluating credit risk, monitoring customer performance, and communicating appropriately to your customers. The following information discusses key features of Credit Manager.

Credit Actions
Credit actions are the credit management tasks that you need to perform, such as telephoning customers, sending letters, and doing credit reviews. When working in Credit Manager on a daily basis, you can add credit actions to remind yourself of the tasks you need to complete for your customers. Each credit action is prioritized, so you can work on the most important tasks first.
Credit Manager also provides automated credit actions so you can promptly respond to current situations. For example, whenever a credit hold is placed on an order, the Order Entry module automatically generates a credit action for the customer. Because you see the credit action immediately in Credit Manager, you can respond quickly to the situation and decide whether it is wise to delay the shipment and jeopardize a sale. In addition, Credit Manager can automatically create credit actions to remind you when it is time for customers' regular credit reviews.

You can create and prioritize your own credit actions for any reason. Each time you speak with a customer you can update the credit action online by entering customer comments, questions, or notes.

Whenever you add a Credit Action, the system creates an "alert notice," which is the on-screen reminder of the credit action. Credit Manager automatically displays alert notices for your review when you start the module, and periodically thereafter.

Dunning Letters and Business Correspondence
Dunning is the process of contacting customers about their accounts, specifically to communicate with them when accounts are past due. With Credit Manager, you can design your own dunning form letters to handle past due situations for all levels of delinquency. These form letters can include a table containing a list of the customer's open items.

Dunning letters are not the only types of correspondence between you and your customers. For general business letters, you can use the same Microsoft Word interface that you use for dunning letters. You can create a standard letter and generate it immediately, or use Word to edit the letter.

Grid/Graph Toggle
When a grid is displayed in Credit Manager, a Grid/Graph button is available. This toggle button switches back and forth between a graphical portrayal of the information and a list of the data from which the graph is created.

Bridge View/Customer View Toggle
When a customer is related to a parent company by bridge code, a toggle button is available so you can switch between viewing data for the customer and the parent company. This button is available on all Customer tabs where a relationship between a customer and a parent company exists.

iDistribute applications are controlled at three levels: module, program, and event. The key to setting up a quality security system depends on your understanding of these levels and how they relate to each other. Security is based on a hierarchy. Your security system is divided into three levels of users: individual, group, and default. On a fundamental level, security is a catalog of permissions granted to individuals or groups of individuals for specific tasks. 

The audit tracking feature to monitor selected user activity by date, time, and user. With audit tracking, selected user actions are recorded in an audit table, which stores information including date, time, user, and action performed. You can use these audit records to generate reports and locate specific transactions. You can determine which actions you want to audit, how often you want to generate audit reports, and how often to purge audit records. Audit tracking is available for all modules.

The audit facility does not reside within the modules themselves, but within the underlying database engine. The audit facility uses database "triggers" to create its audit records. When you define which actions you want to audit, you are attaching one of these triggers to the database table that contains the selected column. When activity occurs that affects an audited column in the table, the database is updated and the trigger is "fired," which records the activity in the audit table. For example, if you want to audit the addition of a customer record, you would create a trigger attached to the strcustr table that would fire whenever a record is added to the table. The audit record includes all pertinent details of the activity, including the type of action taken, the user who performed the action, the time and date of the action, the column affected, and both the old and new values in the column.