Experience for OFBiz to propertly support multicurrency accounting and
autoposting
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Key: OFBIZ-1343
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-1343
Project: OFBiz
Issue Type: Wish
Components: accounting
Affects Versions: Release Branch 4.0
Environment: Any.
This discussion was prompted by David's mention that core OFBiz accounting is
being worked on again.
Reporter: Cameron Smith
Here are our experiences of the changes we had to make to OFBiz accounting, in
order to support a working multicompany system (that is, with one installation
of OFBiz, you can manage the accounts of multiple separate organizations).
Note that within one user company it is quite common to have several different
firms with different legal identities but sharing the same office and public
image. For instance a holding company, a consulting company, and an investment
company.
We use these alterations, successfully, in our local branch of OFBiz. Our
experience may be of use to David and other committers. Please note that our
focus is on SMEs so some of what I say below, may not be relevant if you are
focussing on large firms.
MultiCompany changes
The basic changes are that ALL relevant entities need to have an
organizationPartyId, to refer to the organization whose accounting is being
recorded. Core OFBiz currently only has this in some places and not in others.
We found it necessary to add in the following entities, in some cases altering
the PK to include this:
GlAccountOrganization - this already has organizationPartyId but we added
orgAccountName, allowing an account to have a per-company title
GlAccountRole - the role a certain party has with regards to a certain account
varies according to which companies we are accounting for. For instance the
same external firm could be a supplier to one company and client of another.
CustomTimePeriod - a fiscal month or year could be closed for one company and
open for another.
UomConversionDated - each company has its own accounting policy for dealing
with foreign currency exchange rates
General changes
1. We altered postAcctgTrans to permit transactions to be posted in virtual
accounting months, as well as simply calendar months. this allows the account
to clearly demonstrate the work steps performed at year opening and year end,
which normally have to follow a certain sequence.
2. We use GlXbrlClass to separate between "off the shelf" accounts which the
system creates automatically (you could have one XML import file for each
country's GAAP), and accounts created by a specific firm.
3. We altered Facility to have a geoId so you can break down where the
facilities which hold your fixed assets are located.
Autoposting changes
We found the Opentaps approach very limiting here, in terms of deciding what
accounts to post to when. In terms of core OFBiz we did not need to do
anything special, however one interesting general point to consider is: what
length will your glAccountIds be? It is very useful if you enforce a
standard length. We use two digits at the start to leave space for multiple
GAAP's accounts to coexist, and the rest are a codification of the account code.
If your max. length is too short obviously you can run out of space to create
subaccounts!
More interestingly, it can be useful for the client's ID number in the system
(or some part of it) to match the last element of the account code. This helps
with any manual verification of transactions. However it requires you to have
a long enough glAccountId to fit this many accounts.
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