Basic General Accounting Setup

Below is a basic checklist to do a basic general accounting setup for OFBiz. The assumption is that you have downloaded and installed OFBiz with the demo data. All the following options can be found under the 'Accounting Tab'.

Default Organisation

OFBiz comes with a default party called 'Company' that represents the main business. This will be your company. Dont forget to update the description, address and other contact details with your own ones in Party Manager

Default Currency

OFBiz comes with an accounting default currency of 'USD'. If you need to change this then there are a couple of places where this needs to be done:

In the 'framework/common/config/' directory there is a file called 'general.properties' where the following entries need to be changed from default US settings. In the example below I've used New Zealand as the default country and currency.

• currency.uom.id.default=NZD
• country.geo.id.default=NZL

The default organisation (Company) is also setup with a default currency of USD. You can change this as follows:

• Using the Webtools menu at the bottom of the screen
• Select Entity Data Maintenance from the 'Entity Engine Tools' list of items
• Find the entity 'PartyAcctgPreference' and click the 'All' button
• View the entry that has PartyId = 'Company' (you will see that the baseCurrencyUOMId' field is set to USD'
• Click on the 'Edit' button and change the baseCurrencyUOMId this field to the currency of your choice using the standard international 3 letter abbreviation (eg GBP, EUR, AUS, NZD etc)
• Save the record.

Tip: If you want to change the prefix or numbering of Sales Orders, Quotes or Invoices they can all be amended in a similar manner in this record.

Financial Periods

As a default OFBiz is installed with some pre defined financial accounting or time periods. You will probably need to close these and create time periods that are relevant to your organisation. As a minimum you will need a financial year period.

Note:If your financial period is 1^stApril 2008 to 31^st March 2009 then you will need to set this up in OFBiz with a start date of 1^st April 2008 and an end date of 1^st April 2009 as the test for the end date uses a 'less than ' test rather than an 'equal to or less than' one.

You may also want to setup other periods such as the ones that relate to your VAT or GST periods.(eg monthly or quarterly)

Global Chart of Accounts

OFBiz comes with a master template for a very comprehensive chart of accounts. This can be found in 'Global GL Defaults' under the 'Accounting' tab.

A couple of points to note

• you do not need to use all the accounts defined in this master template (but it may be simpler to look for the accounts that you can use or rename)
• you can create your own additional accounts if you dont want to use the ones in the master template

Tip: You need to be careful if you do decide to create your own accounts that they contain all the details required and that they are linked into the relevant configuation for the setup of the GL defaults. This means that if you change an account (eg Inventory) to one of your own - you need to check the GL defaults setup and replace any reference to the Inventory account to the one you have created.

Chart of Accounts for 'Company'

The chart of accounts for the default organisation (Company) is built up by selecting the accounts that you want to use from the global chart of accounts master template. This means that if you want to create a new account then you need to create it first in the Global Chart of Accounts and then link (or assign) it to the chart of accounts for Company.

Note: to un-link or un-assign accounts from the default company - Use the Entity Data Maintenance from the Webtools menu. Look for the entity 'GlAccountOrganization' and delete the record to remove the link.

Journal

OFBiz comes with a default 'ERROR_JOURNAL' already setup an assigned to the default organisation. The error journal is used as a 'catch all' for any accounting transaction that the system cant automatically post to the GL. In other words this usually means that there is setup missing in the GL account defaults for a particular type of transaction so the system doesnt know where to post it to.

The transactions in the ERROR_JOURNAL can be viewed by using the 'Un-posted transactions' button. Ensure that you check the 'Un-posted transactions' regularly to see what type of transactions are falling into error as you may need to amend your setup.

GL Account Defaults

This maps the type of transaction to a GL account. If you have changed the Chart of Accounts for Company (eg adding or removing assignments) then check all the defaults carefully as you may need to change some of the entries here.

Exchange Rates for Multiple Currencies

You can input exchange rates from the base currency to other currencies.

TO DO : Need to test the case of currency revalutaion where for example a tax authority publishes an exchange rate to be used at the end of the month for all transactions using that currency that occurred within that month.