About Accounts

IRIS Financials follows a coding structure of Nominals > Ledgers > Accounts.

Wherever a nominal is linked to a ledger, it will always require an account from that same ledger to be specified when posting documents or importing data such as budget values. Where the nominal is not linked to a ledger at all, no account is required.

For organisations with multiple locations, the nominals and ledgers will be prefixed with the 3-letter location code (shared ledgers will not have a prefix).

A nominal can be used in conjunction with any account on the linked ledger, and the nominal can only be linked to one ledger at a time. So in the example below, the nominal LLL1000 can be posted with either account CURR01, CURR02 or CURR03.

Posting to an invalid nominal/account combination will result in an error message and the document will fail to post.

There are a number of methods you can use to check which ledger a nominal is linked to.

When posting a document, the easiest way is to double-click in the Account column and the list of available accounts will be displayed. If the nominal does not require an account, the system will simply skip this column.

Alternatively, you can go to Masters>Nominals and select the nominal from the list, the linked ledger will be shown in the Details tab in the dropdown.

You can also run the Chart of Accounts report from the reporting suite, which will list all nominal codes and their mapping/analysis information.

Or you can run a trial balance, including a column to show the ledger.

The standard IRIS Financials nominal structure will have all income/expenditure (or 'trading') nominals linked to a ledger, in most cases this will be a cost centre ledger, but some nominals may be linked to different ledgers and therefore you will get a different list of accounts to choose from when posting.

Trading nominals may be linked to the following ledgers:

  • CAPITAL - Contains Capital income and expenditure ledger accounts.
  • COSTCTR - Contains GAG income ledger accounts and expenditure ledger accounts.
  • SALARY - Contains a list of staff members or summary groups for salary postings.
  • TRIPS - Contains a list of trips.

Balance sheet codes may be linked to the following ledgers.

  • CCARD - Contains credit cards.
  • FIXEDAST - Contains fixed assets.
  • SALES - Contains sales ledger accounts.
  • STAFFEXP - Contains a list of staff members for staff expenses.
  • STUDENT - Contains student debtor accounts.
  • PCASH - Contains petty cash tins.
  • PURCHASE - Contains purchase ledger accounts.
  • VAT - Contains VAT periods.

The following ledgers are not designed to have values posted to them but are utilised by other system functions.

  • ASSETTYPE - Contains Categories of Fixed Assets and information relating to the automatic Depreciation rule
  • BANKS - Contains details of bank accounts that are used by the Media Exporter Module
  • CHASELETTER - Contains templates of chase letter texts for credit control
  • CONTRACT - Contains details regarding contracts (e.g. renewal dates) for reference purposes, linking to dashboard reports.
  • COSTCENTRES - Master Cost Centre ledger, used to replicate cost centre accounts across multiple locations
  • PARAMETERS - Contains details linked to the functionality of the document input forms, workflow and other system functions
  • USERS - Contains information regarding users' approval limits for document authorisations

Standard Nominal List

Whilst each organisation will have its own nominal codes, as agreed upon at the implementation stage, for information, the Standard Nominal listing for education clients is based on the following:

Income/Expenditure

1000-1099 GAG and Other Grants
1100-1299 Other Income
2000-2999 Salaries
3000-3999 Premises
4000-4999 Educational / Curriculum Expenditure
5000-5099 Catering Expenditure
5100-6499 Other Expenditure
6500-6899 Educational Visits
6950 LGPS Gain / (Loss)
6955 VAT Adjustment
7000-7999 Depreciation, Write off & Disposal
8000-8999 Capital

Balance Sheet

9000-9199 Fixed Assets
9200-9409 Current Assets
9410 Credit Card Control
9420-9429 Current Assets
9430-9509 Current Liabilities
9515 Intra Company
9520-9522 VAT
9525-9629 Current Liabilities
9630-9699 Trips
9700-9799 Current Liabilities
9800-9899 Reserves
9900 Surplus / Deficit for the Year