A chart of accounts (COA) is a list of all the financial accounts of an organization, and is used for recording transactions and balances in the organization's general ledger.
The Tyler Munis accounting software uses an account string with up to 8 segments. Each segment denotes a specific element of the account. The structure is as follows:
Fund (XXX) - Function (XX) - Department (XX) - Division (XX) - Program (XXXX) - Sub-Fund (XXXX) - Object (XXXXX) - Project (XXXXX)
This is expressed as 123-45-67-890-1234-5678-90123-45678 (Project is optional as applicable.)
Certain funds utilize the sub-fund segment where there is a need to separate and report individually, the assets, liabilities, and fund balance of that sub-unit of the fund. An example of this is within special districts, where fund 120 is the main fund but the activities for each of the City's individual Landscape Maintenance Districts (LMD) and Community Facilities Districts (CFD) are accounted for in their own respective sub-fund to ensure no comingling of any assets, liabilities or fund balance. This approach differs from the legacy system where each LMD had its own specific fund to ensure separation of assets, liabilities and fund balance.
To simplify data entry and retrieval, Tyler Munis utilizes Organization (ORG) Codes, to identify "where" a transaction has occured, and an Object (OBJ) Code to identify "what" the transaction was.
For funds where there is no requirement to segregate assets, liabilities, and fund balance within that fund (no sub-fund), the ORG number is derived as follows:
- Revenue and Expense Objects: Fund number (3) and Program number (4)
Example: 101 (General Fund) 1601 (Finance Admin) = Org 1011601 General Fund Finance Admin - this enables reporting and control at the programmatic level.
- Balance Sheet Objects: Fund number (3)
Example: 101 (General Fund) - This pools all the assets, liabilities, and fund balance for all general fund programmatic areas.
For funds where there is a requirement to segregate assets, liabilities and fund balance within that fund (includes sub-fund), the ORG number is derived as follows:
- Revenue and Expense Objects: Sub-Fund number (4) and Program number (4)
Example: 2030 (River Ridge) 3801 (Special Districts) = ORG 20303801 River Ridge LMD Special Districts - This enables reporting and control at the programmatic level.
- Balance Sheet Objects: Fund number (3) and Sub-Fund (4)
Example 120 (Special Districts) 2030 (River Ridge LMD) = 1202030 - This pools all assets, liabilties and fund balance for all River Ridge Sub-fund programmatic areas only
A listing of Org and Object codes is contained below.