Setting Up Your General Ledger (GLs)

Prerequisites:

• You know what your GL account numbers are.
• You understand how your GL account numbers are structured (whether it is split up by department, or only by payroll category). 
• If Harmony does not provide an export interface out-of-the-box, you know how the export needs to be mapped in order to successfully import the file into your accounting system.

Solution:

Setting Up a GL Export Interface

1. Navigate to Admin Settings > Interfaces > GL Export Interfaces. 
2. Activate the export interface that matches your accounting system. If you do not see an interface that matches your current accounting system, you will need to create a new interface.
   • For a list of existing GL export interfaces, visit our Payroll Integrations page.

Creating a New GL Export Interface

1. Click "+ New". 
2. Enter a "Code" and "Name" for your export interface. 
3. If you include dashes in your GL account numbers, check off the box for "Export with dashes".
4. Click "+ New" to add a new row. Note: The order here should follow your GL account setup.
5. Enter the "Code", "Name", "Type", and "Length" for each field on each row. If it is required, check off the box for "Required". 
6. Click the save icon to save your changes. 

Define Your GL Account Numbers/Codes/Names 

1. Navigate to Payroll Setup > General Ledger Setup > Account Setup. 
2. Enter your debit and credit account numbers for each payroll category. If you differentiate your account numbers by department as well, enter the differentiating part of your GL into the 'Department' tab, for each department. 
3. If you have account codes that do not follow the general structure, you will need to enter them into the overwrite tab. This will overwrite any of the default structure codes entered into any of the other tabs for the specific criteria (category, department, employee, etc.). 
4. Click the save icon to save your changes. 

Define Your GL Structure 

1. Navigate to Payroll Setup > General Ledger Setup > Structure. 
2. Harmony already provides a predefined GL structure. By default, it only takes the account numbers you defined for each payroll category. If you use departments, you must add it into the "Debit" and "Credit" fields. You can include category GL, department code, department GL, and/or "-". Alternatively, you can also create a new GL structure (more below) if you have some payroll categories that are split up by department and some that are not.
3. Click the save icon to save your changes.

Creating a New GL Structure 

1. Navigate to Payroll Setup > General Ledger Setup > Structure. 
2. Click "+ New". 
3. Activate the structure by clicking the toggle at the top of the page. Ensure that it is green. 
4. Enter the "Name" of your GL structure. 
5. For "Source", select 'Paycard'. 
6. Under Available Payroll Categories, select the appropriate payroll categories that this GL structure will apply to. 
7. Click the ">" to move the selected payroll categories into the Selected Payroll Categories section. If you've mistakenly added a wrong payroll category, you can select this payroll category and click "<" to move it back to the Available Payroll Categories section. 
8. Define your structure for both your "Debit" and "Credit" accounts. You can include category GL, department code, department GL, and/or "-". 
9. Click the save icon to save your changes. Repeat steps 2 through 9 for each structure you want to define. 

Example

Note: This example will be using a GL structure of Category GL code, followed by a dash ( - ), followed by the Department GL code. This example is only for demonstration purposes and your company structure may differ. 

1. Assume that we have two departments: Sales (SAL) and Development (DEV). These will be our GL accounts in our financial system: 

Notice that most accounts have the same first three characters across all departments. The only part of the account code that is different is the last two digits, which is differentiate between the departments. For example, for 'Wages', the common part between departments is "123", while the last two digits are referring to the department ("01" for SAL and "02" for DEV). This will be the general structure of these GL accounts.

However, you will also notice that the 'Accruals/Owed' categories for both departments are the same, while the 'Other' categories are entirely different and don't follow any similar structure. We will address these exceptions when setting up the GL account codes below.

2. This is what we should enter in the Account Setup in Harmony (in the 'Payroll Categories' tab): 

You may notice that we entered in the whole account code for the 'Accruals/Owed' category. This is because the code does not seem to change between departments as mentioned earlier. In this case, you can simply enter in the entire code into the payroll category GL account. By default, Harmony will use the whole category GL code and so, will use this entire code for the Accrual category, regardless of department. 

3. This is what we should enter in the Account Setup in Harmony (in the 'Department' tab):

4. Finally there is the 'Other' category that does not follow the standard structure of the other GLs, so these will need to be entered into the 'Overwrite' tab.

Note: The account may have a debit (expense) or credit (liability) or both. The fields will be greyed out if they are not available.

Note: Depending on the sub-modules for Harmony Payroll that you have purchased, you may see additional columns than the above. 

5. Then, in the structure setup, there should be a new structure that is created. The default will only fit the 'Accruals/Owed' categories, but won't work for the others. Navigate to Payroll > Payroll Setup > General Ledger Setup > Structure and click the "+ New" button to add a new structure. 

6. On the left side, select the payroll categories that will be using this new structure. In this example, this will be Wages, Bonuses, and Taxes. You can use the checkboxes and ">" arrow to move them to the Selected Payroll Categories section. 

7. For the "Debit Account" and "Credit Account" fields, this is what should be entered: 

This kind of structure means that it will first take the Payroll Category GL that you entered (i.e. the "123" for wages, "234" for bonus, and "345" for taxes). That is then followed by a hyphen ("-"). Then finally, the last part is the Department GL that you entered (i.e. "01" for Sales and "02" for Development). Together, this will create the account codes that we're looking for (i.e. "123-01" for Sales Wages, "123-02" for Development Wages, etc.).