About account IDs

Accounts of different types should be easily recognisable to users by their IDs. Account IDs must comply with the following terms:

  • National generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)
  • Accounting best practices
  • Restrictive rules of financial reporting (in some countries)

Well-planned design of account IDs increases users' efficiency. When IDs are meaningful, users can make fewer errors and enter data more quickly.
Visma.net ERP accommodates flexible configuration of account IDs with the help of segmented keys.

Before you start creating a chart of accounts, take the time to think through the whole system of accounts (and subaccounts, if the Subaccounts functionality is enabled in your system) and the ways their IDs will be composed. Although you may add a segment to a segmented key or remove it from the key after some accounts have been created, these actions may have unpredictable results.

A segmented key is a system entity that you use to define the structure of IDs used in the system.
The segmented key then serves as a template when a user creates an ID, such as for an account in the system.

To configure the general ledger account IDs, in the Segment values (CS203000) window, select the segmented key ACCOUNT and specify the settings for this key.
The segmented key may contain an alphanumeric string of up to 10 characters. It may be divided into multiple segments or may be non-segmented.

In accounting, accounts are divided into multiple types: asset, liability, equity, income, and expense.
In Visma.net ERP, each accounts has a corresponding account type (Asset, Liability, Income, and Expense), associated with it.
The account type can also be reflected in account IDs to make them recognisable to users.

For example: By using a non-segmented account ID, you may set certain rules to associate the first character in the account ID with the account type as follows: 1 for asset accounts, 2 for current and long-term liabilities, 3 for income accounts, 4 through 7 for expense accounts, and so on. Alternatively, you could create a two-segment account ID, reserve the first one-character segment for account type, and reserve the second segment for the account number within the particular type.

You should create logical and systematic account IDs to make them easy for users to recognise. This reduces the possibility of errors during data entry.

Visma.net ERP offers validation functionality, which you can use to reduce errors that could occur when the account IDs are defined.

Before you add accounts by using the Chart of accounts (GL202500) windows, you can turn on the validation for each particular segment of the segment key that is used for accounts. To turn on the validation, in the Segment values (CS203000) window, you need to select the Validate check box for a particular segment or all segments of the ACCOUNT segmented key. Once you have configured the ACCOUNT segmented key, in the Segment values (CS203000) window, you specify the list of segment values for the segmented key.

As a result, when you create an account ID, for a segment for which the Validate check box is selected, you can add a segment value only by selecting an appropriate one from the list of existing segment values. You open this list by pointing at any segment in the input mask that appears (such as ___/__/____, which indicates the number of segments and their lengths) and pressing F3.

If the Validate check box is not selected for some segments, values for those segments will not be validated.
When you enter new values for a non-validated segment, the values will not be added to the list of segment values automatically.