General Ledger
The General Ledger function is central to the entire financial system.  It is the ultimate repository for financial information.  It is fully integrated and receives automated transactions from all of the NCAS core modules; it also receives and stores information from agency subsystems and other central systems.  The financial and reporting functions of the General Ledger are summarized below.

General Ledger Financial Functions
The General Ledger functionability must support the following NCAS requirements:

• Flexible accounting key structure that ensures uniformity and provides fund, object, budgetary, and GAAP data elements for central and agency recording and reporting requirements;
• On-line maintenance of accounting keys with validation to a statewide uniform chart of accounts;
• Real-time validation against the chart of accounts for all detail transactions;
• Grouping of accounts through roll-up structures;
• Security by all levels of the accounting key structure;
• Cash basis fund accounting for monthly budgetary reporting (budgetary basis);
• Accrual basis fund accounting for the CAFR (GAAP basis);
• Multiple years of historical data;
• Multiple-period posting cycles;
• Summary and detailed transaction information for budgetary and GAAP reporting for central managers and agency managers;
• Immediate access to summary balance information with drill-back to detailed transactions;
• On-line analysis for accounts and ranges of accounts using the account keys; and
• Statistical accounts maintenance and posting.

• General Ledger reporting capabilities must include:
• Statewide agency reporting for budgetary and GAAP basis;
• Agency management reporting by responsibility center, cash management reporting, and detailed transaction reporting;
• Project-to-date reporting for grants and capital improvement projects;
• Ad hoc reporting that may be agency-defined;
• The General Ledger function records and reports transactions according to GAAP and GASB requirements.  From an accounting standpoint, this allows the State to:
• Maintain all fund accounting transactions based on cash, accrual, and/or modified accrual accounting methods;
• Capture and maintain the financial and non-financial information at the level of detail needed by each department to meet internal and external reporting requirements;
• Enter information from many sources using a variety of input media, such as tape, disk, direct on-line input, subsystem interfaces, and optimal real-time entry;
• Control the information as it is entered, subject to edit and validation rules;
• Track detailed journal entries and accumulate them for proper posting or reporting;
• Inquire on transaction balances and summary data; and
• Report journal entry and balance detail in any format.

Accounts Receivable Financial Functions
The Accounts Receivable application must support a variety of functions for controlling and reporting the receivables process including:

• Statewide monitoring of accounts receivable efforts;
• Coordination of information, systems and procedures between State agencies to maximize collection of past-due accounts and the statewide setoff debt collection;
• Adoption of statewide policies and procedures for the management and collection of accounts receivable by State agencies;
• Establishment of statewide procedures for writing off accounts receivable and for determining when to end efforts for collection;
• On-line search of customer balances and payment history;
• Cross reference between AR customer and vendor records to support vendor payment setoff; and
• Real-time cash application across accounts and customers;
• Electronic cash application, which allows receipt of bank lock-box transmissions complete with invoice detail and the automatic application of cash payments to specified invoices;
• Flexible policies to allow for cash tolerance overrides, generation of accounts receivable statements and dunning letters, and automatic cash application to customer invoices within established tolerances;
• Aging categories that can be specified to the statewide accounts receivable policies or the agency's needs and that are calculated from the invoice date or the invoice due date;
• Automatic generation of interest on past-due items;
• Credit limit variances by customer;
• Automatic deletion of accounts that become inactive with a defined accounts receivable policy; and
• Repository for custom billing systems, creating customer balances and associated invoice information.

• System control and balancing of the accounts receivable system;
• Statewide collection activity and associated costs incurred in the collection process;
• Cash and accrual base accounting for cash application of receivables at the detail line account;
• Aging information by the aging categories established within policy; and
• Accounts receivable statements and dunning letters.

Cost Allocation Financial Functions
The Cost Allocation process must provide the following functions:

• Multiple allocation techniques that can be used in any combination to reflect the State's allocation policies;
• Ability to allocate and distribute specific expenses or pools of expenses;
• Variable allocations based on previous month's activity, for example, hours worked on a particular project;
• Ability to allocate historical data, budgeted information, statistical information, or a combination of these;
• Both sequential and advanced simultaneous allocation methods;
• Intermediate levels of allocation;
• Automated scheduling for monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual allocations ; and
• Control reports to help determine what has been allocated and to whom;

Budgetary Control
The Budgetary Control function ensures that expenditures are kept within the authorized budget.  The Budgetary Control function is fully integrated with the materials management functions.

Budgetary Control Financial Functions
This integrated function must ensure and provide:

• Real-time check of transactions each time a document is entered or updated at each decision point within the Materials Management cycle;
• Overextend tolerances defined by the agency to allow for control of expenditures against a specified amount or percentage; and
• Automatic accumulation and control of available fund balances at multiple levels that can be defined by the agency.

• Audit reports documenting all transactions and activities processed through Budgetary Control; and
• Alert reports listing budgetary control exceptions and their resolutions.