Essential Settings

The Business Essentials section of the Configuration Assistant and the Exo Business Config application defines key operations and must be carefully set up before operation begins. This includes the General Ledger setup and control accounts, period management and tax rates. These settings are not normally changed once transacting has begun.

Essential settings are configured at:

• The Essential section of Exo Business Config
• The Business Essentials section of the Configuration Assistant

Settings are grouped into the following subsections:

• Implementation Notes
• General Settings
• General Ledger
• GL Control Accounts
• Financial Year
• Analysis Codes
• Current Period
• Tax Rates
• Company (Exo Business Config only)
• Exo Job Costing (Exo Business Config only)

Implementation Notes

The Implementation Notes section is a free-form notes area where implementers are encouraged to enter important notes about the installation. For example, this might include key configuration settings, database customisations, or any unusual implementation of extra fields.

There are also fields to enter details of the Implementation Partner and System Administrator. These details are displayed on the About Box of the core MYOB Exo Business application (select About from the Help menu, then click Registration Details).

Click Register to send an email to MYOB containing the System Administrator Details and information from the Company Details section, so that MYOB's records of your contact information can be updated.

General Settings

The General Settings section holds information relating to decimal places, tax settings and stock costing methods.

Decimal Places in Numeric Values

Set the number of decimal places used in transactions for the following amounts:

• Cost prices
• Sell prices
• Bill costs
• Quantities
• Bill quantities
• Discounts

Tax

The name of this section (GST, VAT, etc) depends on the country that the company is based in. The following settings are available:

Field	Description
Invoice basis/ Payments basis	MYOB Exo Business is primarily designed to record tax on an Invoice basis, i.e. each invoice line has a tax amount that is accrued as soon as the invoice is produced. However, Exo Business does have additional mechanisms that will assist in the production of Tax returns based on when payments are made or received. The differences are: When a payment is made you will receive additional prompts to record the tax portion of a payment transaction. The Tax return (or BAS) will gather payment transactions rather than invoice transactions and will mark these as having been included on the tax return. Note: See the "Taxation Features" white paper for more information.
TAX inclusive pricing for debtors	Enable this option if prices are entered inclusive of tax. Leaving the box clear indicates tax-exclusive pricing.
Base Debtor TAX rate Base Creditor TAX rate	Select the default tax rates applied to Debtor and Creditor transactions for analysis.
Withholding Tax on Creditors Payments	To apply withholding tax to Creditors Payments, tick this option and specify a tax rate. If this option is ticked, an option to apply withholding tax becomes available on the Creditor Payment Entry window.

Other

This area contains other key settings:

Field	Description
Stock cost method	Select the costing method to use for stock items: AVERAGE, LATEST or STANDARD. If "AVERAGE" is selected, two more options relating to "special" transactions become available: Include transactions with zero cost in average cost calculations Include credit transactions in average cost calculations Enable or disable these options as necessary.
BOM cost method	Select the costing method to use for Bills of Materials: AVERAGE, LATEST or STANDARD.
Operate in multiple currencies	Tick this option to enable support for multiple currencies.

General Ledger

In this section, you can configure the General Ledger as per the customer’s requirements. This information entered into this will seldom change after the initial setup and in some cases may actually have system-wide implications if it is changed.

GL Account Code Structure

The structure of the General Ledger coding method is set up here. GL account codes can be divided into up to three sections:

branch-account-subaccount

Both the branch prefix and sub-account suffix are optional. Select whether branches and/or sub-account sections are needed, and the number of digits for each section. An example of the structure you have entered is displayed below in red. This example updates as changes are made.

Summarise Postings From

Tick the boxes in this section to summarise Debtor/Creditor postings to the General Ledger.

GL Stock Integration

Selects the method of stock system integration to the General Ledger:

• Periodic stock - This option is more suited to stock valuation where processes such as Job Costing or Manufacturing (including the allocation of overhead or labour costs to the finished product) are used. This feature requires the user to have the "GL Closing Stock" procedure on their menu. Periodic Stock allows the user to determine the level of stock-on-hand to be reflected in the accounts at the end of the period.

• Perpetual stock - This option is the more complex of the two inventory integration methods. This method allows the posting of physical stock transactions to the General Ledger on a one-to-one basis. Disabling this feature will require the user to manually post stock valuations in a periodic manner (Periodic Stock system).  Perpetual Stock is more suited to warehousing and retail type situations with standard stock in/ stock out movements, and only supports Average stock costing methods. To use Perpetual Stock two additional accounts are required to be setup in the GL Control Accounts (Stock Clearing Account and a Stock Adjustment Account). The Post Stock to GL menu procedure must be added to the users menu. The Stock Purchases GL Code for physical stock should point to the Stock Clearing Account; the "Stock GL Coding" function included in the GL Utilities can be used to achieve this.

Select a Cost of Sales method - this controls the posting of cost of sales to the General Ledger. Choose from:

• Post to Cost of Sales from GL Control A/c - This option posts all cost of sales to a single control account: the Cost of Sales account specified in the GL Control Accounts section.

• Post to Cost of Sales A/c from Stock Item - This option allows the user to select multiple trading accounts based on the Stock item. Cost of sales is posted to the account specified by the C.O.S. GL code setting on the Stock Details 2 tab for the relevant Stock item.

Other

Branch no. for balance sheet Specify the default branch number for transactions on the Balance Sheet.

Note: This field should only be set when first setting up a site. Any attempt to change its value once transactions have been entered will have unknown consequences, and may potentially corrupt the Balance Sheet branch reporting and/or data.

Chart of Accounts

While an organisation’s Chart of Accounts can be set up manually from the main MYOB Exo Business application, the configuration applications allow you to select a pre-made Chart of Accounts from a list. Select an Industry classification and Business type, and the pre-made Chart of Accounts appears in the section below.

Alternatively, you can import a chart of accounts from a CSV file, e.g. one provided by a company accountant. Click the Import button to select the CSV file containing the chart of accounts definition. See the "MYOB Exo Business Implementation Guide" for details of the expected file format.

Once the Chart of Accounts has been selected or imported, it appears in the area at the bottom of the General Ledger section, where it can be altered manually if necessary:

• To edit an item, right-click on it and select Edit. Make any changes then click OK.
• To delete an item, right-click on it and select Delete, then click Yes to confirm.
• To create a new group, account or sub-account, right-click on the node you want to create the item under and select New GL Group, New Account or New Sub-Account as appropriate. Enter details for the new item and click OK.

GL Control Accounts

Once the Chart of Accounts has been set up (by importing the information or manual entry), the key accounts can be brought through to the GL Control Accounts.

The GL Control Accounts section is divided into General and Custom tabs. The General tab contains the standard control accounts, while the Custom tab contains the control accounts for more specialised areas, such as foreign exchange and advanced stock. If a pre-made Chart of Accounts was selected on the General Ledger screen, a set of default GL Control Accounts will be displayed here.

To set a GL Control Account:

1. Right-click on an account and select Search. A search window appears.

2. Browse through the chart of accounts to find the account you want.

3. Select the account, then click Select & Close.

Financial Year

The Financial Year section is used to set up the periods that compose the financial year.

To set up the financial year:

1. Select a period and click the Edit button, or double-click to edit.

2. Enter a name for the period, as well as a short code and report code (which is useful to set the sequence in a report).

3. Select the financial Quarter that the period belongs to.

4. Under Transaction Entry Validation, select if the month is a standard calendar month or if specific dates are used.

5. If a period is not a standard calendar month, the Dates Between ... and ... of the period must be specified. These dates also contain the year, so these dates must be set up at the beginning of every financial year to reflect the change in dates.

6. Click Save to save the settings.

Note: Ensure the first name in the sequence is the first period of the financial year. This may be different to a standard calendar year.

The Load button allows you to specify and create a standard twelve month financial year.

You must also specify the first period of doing business, and the period that represents January.

Caution: Incorrect setting of the Accounting period representing January will result in incorrect population of the Period History table, as well as causing issues with the current calendar year. Ensure this is set correctly.

Note: See the "Period Handling and Transaction Ageing" white paper for more detail on period management.

Current Period

The Current Period settings track the current period of operation, and help to enforce period transaction dates. As the Financial Year can be defined purely in calendar months rather than explicit dates, the Current Period settings are used to align the calendar months and calendar year to the financial periods. These are then used for period/date enforcement.

Field	Description
First month of the calendar year	This is required to ascertain which financial period will roll over the Current calendar year when an end of month is performed. The system cannot determine this automatically because the financial year may start in any calendar month, and the actual financial period name is customisable (e.g. "Jan", "January", "01"), so it must be explicitly set. Note: Incorrectly setting the first month of the calendar year will result in incorrect population of the Period History table, as well as causing issues with the current calendar year. Ensure this is set correctly.
Current financial period Current calendar year	These values confirm the current period of operation for each ledger. These automatically increment at the correct time during end of period rolls. Transaction ages in Exo Business are numbered from current (0) backwards. Exo Business knows which period in the period table is the current one, and uses this as a point of reference to display the name of the period on reports and within data entry screens. Tip: See the "Period Handling and Transaction Ageing" white paper for more detail on period management.
Default posting age	Enter the default age for transactions when they are posted to the posted to the Debtors, Creditors, Stock or General ledgers.
Analysis age limit	Enter a maximum age (in periods) to act as a limiter in queries on the ledgers, to avoid slow performance or timeouts. The default value is 23 - on smaller databases, it should be possible to set the limit to a greater value without affecting performance.
Year Names	You can customise the display names for the last, current and next year periods if necessary.

Analysis Codes

This section is where you set up Analysis Codes. Analysis Codes are arbitrary codes used in software applications that can be assigned to transactions. They do not perform any function themselves and are independent of the normal grouping of account codes; they are simply a customisable way of grouping related transactions together for sorting and reporting.

Tax Rates

The Tax Rates section sets the tax rates used by the company, which are then used to create the tax return form entries.  Tax rates have the ability to use separate GL Control Accounts, and link to a Tax Return Key Point for tax reporting.

To set up tax rates:

1. Select a tax rate and click the Edit button, or double-click the tax rate to edit.

2. Enter the Tax Rate details, including Name and Tax rate, and select the relevant Tax Return Key Point reference to be used on the tax return.

Tip: See the "Taxation Features" white paper for more detail on taxation and tax rate setup, including suggested default settings for different countries.

Company

This section is only available in Exo Business Config, and only when the InterCompany module is in use.

Enter the Company number for this company, as specified on Setup Source Companies window in the InterCompany module.

See the InterCompany Help (available under Additional Modules) for more information on these Company numbers.

Exo Job Costing

This section is only available in Exo Business Config, and only when the Exo Job Costing module is in use.

See the Exo Job Costing Help (available under Additional Modules) for information on these settings.