NetClose - Account Grouping Basic Configuration
Summary
An account grouping is a container used to tell the NetClose Reconciliation module how a set of accounts is to be reconciled. You assign accounts from your chart of accounts to an account grouping, and those accounts from your chart of accounts in specific groupings then have the rules set in the account grouping rules applied to them when it's time to reconcile.
In this article, we'll cover what you need to do to get your account groupings set up at the basic level so you can start performing basic reconciliations.
Creating New Account Groupings
Navigate to NetClose > Setup > Account Groupings & Rules, then select the New NetClose Account Grouping button at the top of the screen to make a new one. For now, you'll just need to give them a name, but you can give them an owner, approver, and set the natural balance of the groupings if you already know them.
Remember that you'll want a grouping for every account you intend to reconcile, and each grouping will set the owners, approvers, and rules for how accounts are to be reconciled.
Mapping Your Chart of Accounts into Account Groupings
Now you'll need to assign the accounts you want to reconcile to their respective account groupings. Every account in your chart of accounts must be assigned to an account grouping in order to generate reconciliations for the period. This is required because we don't want you to forget to assign a newly-created account you did intend to reconcile to an account grouping; you can have confidence that every active account in your chart of accounts has been specifically assigned to a reconciliation group. We recommend creating an "Unreconciled Accounts" grouping for all accounts that you're not planning on performing reconciliations for, and then creating or using other account groupings for the accounts you want to reconcile.
For your initial setup, you can either manually map the accounts or update them via NetSuite's native CSV upload (recommended). After the initial mapping, it's a bit easier to change account mapping from the account grouping record.
Manual Mapping
If you navigate to any account in your chart of accounts (Lists > Accounting > Accounts), you'll see new NetClose-specific fields added as part of the SuiteApp download. The one you're looking for is the NetClose Account Grouping field. This field is a dropdown list of all the account groupings you have active in your instance; selecting an account grouping will map this account to that grouping and the account will now pull into the Mapped Accounts sublist on the account grouping record.
For initial setup, it's generally better to update your account mapping via CSV upload unless you have a very small chart of accounts.
CSV Import Mapping
For this method, you'll download a CSV of your chart of accounts, populate the CSV with the account groupings you want to map each account to, and then do a CSV update to your chart of accounts.
You can head to the same chart of accounts page to download the initial CSV.
You'll need to delete the empty rows above the column headings; we generally recommend deleting any unnecessary columns from these imports as well. I usually limit my CSV to the internal ID (required), the account number, account name, and then add a column for the account grouping, as pictured below. Note that the spelling of the account grouping must be EXACTLY the same as it is in your account grouping list, and you must have created the account groupings beforehand. You can use the internal IDs of your NetClose Account Groupings if you'd like to have a less error-prone upload experience (just make sure to change the data type on the upload to Internal ID instead of Name).
A last reminder that you're updating the NetClose Account Grouping field on the account, not the NetClose Account Grouping record itself. This means that your import will be an Accounting import type and a Chart of Accounts record type.
System Accounts Without Numbers You will likely have several system-generated accounts in your NetSuite instance that don't have account numbers. On SuiteApp download, our system will create a "System Generated Accounts" grouping for you and automatically put all of these no-number accounts into that grouping. If you want to move these accounts into a different grouping, you'll need to deal with the fact that NetSuite will not let you save an account without a number. There are two ways to handle this. First, you could give your accounts a number. It won't hurt anything, they just don't have numbers by default and most people never touch these accounts in their instances. Second, if you have the NetSuite Advanced Field Help extension, you can click on the "Number" field label and set the field as non-mandatory. You can then change the NetClose Account Grouping without any issues, without giving the account a number. |
Account Grouping Settings
Now that your accounts are mapped, we can move on to adjusting the settings on your account groupings.
While working on the account groupings, if you need a reminder of which accounts are mapped to the grouping, remember that you can go to the Mapped Accounts subtab to see which accounts are assigned to that grouping. You can even edit the accounts from this sublist; click the edit button and an editing window for the account object will pop up. This makes it much easier to adjust mapped accounts in the future if you need to make a change.
With that, let's go over what each of the settings on the NetClose Account Grouping record do. You can turn each of these settings on or off as you deem fit, and once you've done this for all of your groupings, you're ready to use the reconciliations module! There will be links below for more advanced configuration topics (like subsidiary sub-groups and saved search auto-reconciliations).
The information below is organized according to the field groups on the Account Grouping record.
Primary Information
| Name | The name of the account grouping. Can be anything you want it to be. |
| Natural Balance | This is the natural balance (debit or credit) of the mapped accounts. If you have accounts with natural balances that offset, this will be the expected balance of the whole grouping. This setting controls whether debits or credits will be displayed as positive amounts on the reconciliation record (selected option will be a positive amount for accounts in that account grouping). |
| Risk Level | This field is useful for audit or filtering purposes. It doesn't control any functions. |
| *Segregate by Subsidiary | If checked, reconciliations will be created for each subsidiary in your NetSuite instance for this account grouping. For example, if you have a Parent and three child subsidiaries (one of which is an elimination subsidiary), a reconciliation will be generated showing the balance in the mapped accounts split into whichever of the 4 subsidiaries the balance is held in (rather than the consolidated amount). There is some advanced functionality allowing you to separate subsidiaries into functional groups with different rules; read more about this in this article. If you need information about how NetClose Reconciliations handles exchange rates and consolidation, go to this article. |
| *Segregate by Account | If checked, an individual reconciliation will be created for each account mapped to the account grouping. If unchecked, the combined balance and activity of all mapped accounts will be a single reconciliation. This is useful for situations where several accounts should be reconciled using the same criteria and have the same owner/approver combination, but you want to have individual support for each of the accounts. |
| Notes | Any additional information you want to record on the account grouping record can be stored here. |
Segregating by Subsidiary AND Account If you choose to segregate by subsidiary and account, just remember that a reconciliation will be generated for each account AND each subsidiary. This will give you # of accounts * # of subsidiaries reconciliations for that account grouping. If you have a large chart of accounts or a large number of subsidiaries, this can get very big, very fast and lead to long processing times when generating reconciliations for a specified period. There are a couple of ways around this. First, you could go to your chart of accounts and make an account only available in selected subsidiaries. NetClose reconciliations will only be generated for account/subsidiary combinations if the account is available in that subsidiary. Alternatively, you could use child groupings to either consolidate a set of subsidiaries into one reconciliation, or have those subsidiaries not generate reconciliations at all. More about that in our Account Grouping Subsidiary Configuration article. |
Assignment Information
| Account Owner | This is the user who should be performing the reconciliation. They'll be able to filter by their name on the reconciliation screen when provided here. This user MUST be a full NetClose user to be selected here. |
| Approver | This is the user who should approving the reconciliation once completed by the owner. They'll be able to filter by their name on the reconciliation screen when provided here. This user MUST be a full NetClose user to be selected here. |
| Relative Due Date | If you'd like to set a due date for your reconciliations, the relative due date will follow your working and non-working days set up in your NetClose Work Calendars, the same way that tasks operate. |
| Absolute Due Date | This works just like the relative due date field, but due dates will be set on whichever day of the month you set here, not ignoring non-working days like the relative due dates do. |
Reconciliation Rules
| Frequency | This controls when this account grouping will be pulled into the reconciliation generation list for a period. If "Monthly" is selected, this reconciliation can be generated for any monthly, quarterly, or annual period. Quarterly reconciliations can only be selected on quarter periods (Q2, Q3, etc.) Annual frequencies can only be run on the annual period selector (FY2022, FY2023, etc.). |
| Method | There are three methods for reconciling your accounts in NetClose - Activity, Ending Balance, and Open Item Management. Activity: Your reconciliation will require you to explain the change (activity) in your account balance for a period. Ending Balance: Your reconciliation will require you to explain the ending balance of the accounts in the account grouping. Open Item Management: This is a bit more complicated. You may use a workbook to clear debits and credits in the accounts you've grouped together. The items that are not cleared are considered "open" and the open items should match your GL ending balance. Bank: This method is for use with NetClose's Bank Reconciliation module. This type should be used for all accounts that are set up as bank accounts in that module. |
Auto-Reconciliation Rules - General
| Always Auto-Reconcile | This setting will mark the reconciliation associated with this account grouping as auto-reconciled every period it is generated in. Typically this is only used for the GL accounts you are not reconciling that are held in an "unreconciled accounts" grouping that was mentioned earlier in this article. |
| GL Balance Has Not Changed and No Activity | This is exactly what it sounds like--if the GL balance is the same as it was last period and there's no recorded activity in the account, the account will be marked as auto-reconciled for the periods where this is true. |
| Balances Zero and No Activity in Period | A slight adjustment to the previous setting--if the GL balance is zero and there's no recorded activity in the account, the account will be marked as auto-reconciled for the periods where this is true. |
| Reconciliation Items Match | Each reconciliation can have reconciliation items added to them to explain the activity or balance of the account. These reconciliation items can also be carried forward into future periods for items that will remain in the account over time. If the sum of all the reconciliation items matches the GL ending balance or activity amount (depending on your reconciliation method), the account will be auto-reconciled for the period. This works especially well for accounts where you want the ending balance to be zero (or a set number) regardless of the activity in the account. |
| Maximum Months Before Manual Review | This setting is used in conjunction with all other auto-reconciliation settings. If an account is repeatedly auto-reconciled every period, this setting will override the auto-approval after the number of months you set here, requiring a user to manually mark the reconciliation as complete. By default, this is blank, meaning auto-reconciliations will never be overridden. |
Auto-Reconciliation Rules - Search
| Subledger Within NetSuite; Agrees to Search | This box should be checked if you have a saved search in NetSuite that you want to use to auto-reconcile the accounts in your grouping. How to set up such a saved search is covered in more depth in this article. |
Auto-Reconciliation Rules - Thresholds
All of these settings are used as a materiality threshold of sorts. For some settings we care about the amount of activity or balance in an account regardless of whether it is explained or unexplained by our reconciliation items. For the unexplained balance threshold, we care about the amount of the balance or activity that is unexplained by reconciliation items. If the balance, activity, or unexplained balance is under the materiality threshold, we mark the reconciliation as auto-reconciled.
| Rule Group Balance Less than Threshold | This setting looks at the ending balance of the mapped accounts in your account grouping, and if the ending balance is below the "Account Balance Threshold" (becomes visible after the checkbox for this setting is selected), the accounts are marked as auto-reconciled. This happens regardless of whether the grouping is activity or ending balance based. Also note that this is not an absolute value calculation--positive vs negative amounts matter. |
| Rule Group Total Activity Less than Threshold | This setting looks at the total activity of the mapped accounts in your account grouping, and if the activity is below the "Total Activity Threshold" (becomes visible after the checkbox for this setting is selected), the accounts are marked as auto-reconciled. This happens regardless of whether the grouping is activity or ending balance based. Also note that this is not an absolute value calculation--positive vs negative amounts matter. |
| Rule Group Balance and Total Activity Less than Threshold | This is a combination of the above settings. If this is selected, both the "Account Balance Threshold" and "Total Activity Threshold" become available to use, and both must be satisfied for an account to be considered auto-reconciled. The same rules for those fields apply to this setting as well. |
| Unexplained Balance Threshold | This threshold looks at your unexplained balance (the ending balance or activity of your account less and reconciliation items) on the account and compares it to your unexplained balance threshold. If the unexplained balance is below the threshold, the accounts are marked as auto-reconciled. |
Subsidiary Subtab
On parent groupings, there is a single setting under this subtab: Consolidate To. By default, your account groupings, if not segregated by subsidiary, will consolidate to the most common subsidiary to all of the subsidiaries included in the account group. If you want to override this behavior, you can choose the subsidiary you are consolidating into using this setting. This is especially useful when you have many parent-child relationships with subsidiaries, and you use this setting in conjunction with child account groupings, which you can read more about here. If you'd like to know how NetClose reconciliations handle currency exchange rates on consolidation or otherwise, read this article.
You May Have Unexpected Behavior if You Consolidate to a Subsidiary that Normally Does Not Consolidate There are some subsidiaries in NetSuite that you can consolidate into, and others that you cannot. If you go to any financial report, you'll see that some subsidiaries have their own name, and then their name followed by "(Consolidated)", meaning that they support consolidated reporting and have corresponding consolidated exchange rates. If you consolidate into a subsidiary that is not a parent of the subsidiaries in your account grouping, you will get incorrect or unexpected results. Make sure all of your subsidiaries in your account groupings are available in the subsidiary you're consolidating to if you use this feature, or just allow the system to consolidate for you. |
System Subtab
| Inactive | This is the standard Inactive checkbox. Use this to mark your account groupings as inactive--your groupings then will not be included on the "Generate Reconciliations" page, but the underlying reconciliations will still be tied to it. This is a preferred alternative to deletion if you have already generated reconciliations using a grouping. |
| Do Not Generate When No Balance and No Activity | This setting does exactly what it sounds like it does; the system will check the balance and activity of the account in your reconciliation period. If there is no activity or balance in the account, it won't generate a reconciliation for that period. This is useful for accounts where you don't expect anything to happen, but you want to reconcile it if something does happen. |
| Do Not Generate Ever | Another intuitive setting--reconciliations won't generate for the accounts/subsidiaries associated with an account grouping with this setting active. This may be useful if you have subsidiaries that you don't manage or don't reconcile at all. |
Advanced Setup
These items are for some advanced use case and don't need to be considered for NetClose reconciliations to be useful to you. If you've finished your basic setup and want to enhance your product usage, or just want to learn more about the product capabilities, here are some linked articles you can use.
Using Child Account Groupings for Multi-Subsidiary Customization
If you want to have different reconciliation account owners or approvers or rules by subsidiary, or if you want to group together sets of subsidiaries that should have similar rules for a group of accounts, you can use child account groupings to accomplish this. Here's the article where you can read more about this use case.
Setting up Saved Searches to Auto-Reconcile Accounts
You can use NetSuite's native Saved Searches to grab data from a subledger within NetSuite and compare it to your GL. This is especially useful with other Netgain products that generate non-GL impacting subledgers that should match to your GL balance for a given period. If the balance of the saved search matches your GL balance for the selected accounts in your account grouping, the reconciliation will be considered auto-reconciled and the subledger values from your search will be saved as an attached reconciliation item to the reconciliation the search applies to.
If this sounds interesting to you and you want to learn more about how to set up subledger saved search auto-reconciliations, here's the link to the article for you!
Next Steps
You've finished your configuration! Now what?
You can head over to our "Operation" section of the reconciliation knowledge base to learn more about how you can generate your reconciliations each period and how to perform reconciliations once they've been generated. Feel free to come back here if you need to adjust settings as you use the reconciliations module.
Here are some good articles to start with: