Re: [SL] GAAP and fixed asset

[Vincenzo P. <epu...@it...>]

Hello Joseph,

Thanks for your kind reply.

Actually our accountant works with us, in our office, both as an
accountant for the company but also for this projects supporting ERPs
for SMBs.

Probably the GAAP issue should be split into to separate one: the
bureaucratic and the practical.

For the bureaucratic: We had a meeting with a guy from the Egyptian
ministry of Industry and trade. They have a project that supports the
implementation of ERPs for local business. Their main customer is
Oracle, of course.

When we discussed with them of our SL project and the first question
was: is SL GAAP compliant?

Maybe is a non existing issue, but we were not able to provide a
comprehensive reply.

In my (limited) understanding, it's the configuration of a specific
installation that should make SL (and any other accounting package) GAAP
compliant or not. If this is the case, it would be nice to have these
steps detailed, in case somebody has done it already, or try to document
them gathering the existing experience.

For the practical: my dream is that everybody in the company, including
my accountant, should use SL. Avoiding as much as possible having to
export data in order to maintain the highest level of consistency. Is
this too far from the reality?

For the fixed asset issue. The practical conclusion I reached and I
would like to validate with you, was keeping a separate "location" for
those items purchased for internal usage. However my accountant tells me
that this will cause a problem since it will affect the balance. And
this probably takes us again to the previous issue: if we export the
data into Excel than we can treat it as we like, apply depreciation and
so on. But again, it's not very elegant...

Thanks again for your time,

Enzo Puliatti



Joseph A. Maffia wrote:
> Hi Enzo,
>
> I am not sure what you mean by GAAP certification.  In the U.S.  we  use
> different standards then  international standards.  Although they are
> converging.  The IAASB may use terms I am not familiar.
>
> Are you talking about an auditors report that your financial statements
> are in accordance with GAAP? In the U.S. CPAs offer an opinion not a
> certification (which implies a guarantee or a high level of assurance
> then we provide) - this opinion states whether our financial statements
> are fairly stated in accordance with generally accepted accounting
> principles.
> I assume your accountant needs to take your financial statement and
> present them in a uniform format with the audit report, i.e. footnote,
> fonts, title, page number, etc.  This is common for presentation purposes.
>
> You can help your accountant reduce his time and therefore his fees if
> you can present the financial statement in a spreadsheet so that he
> would not have to manually re-enter the information. Lastly, you would
> need to make sure that your G/L account titles are similar to what they
> use in the financial statements. You should strive to mimic his report.
> Talk to your accountant get his suggestions for changes. If your books
> are not in order because you don't know bookkeeping then you should hire
> a bookkeeper.
>
> If your question is really - what is GAAP and how do I comply with it -
> it would be more difficult to teach you. But as the Chairman I would not
> suggest that you learn GAAP and bookkeeping. You should hire someone
> familiar. I.e. GAAP requires you to capitalize certain assets that have
> a useful life greater then one year. If you bought furniture you would
> have to depreciate it over its useful life. You would have an asset
> account with an accompanying contra asset account that accumulates
> depreciation. As you can see it gets involved. In the U.S. GAAP is free.
> You can get GAAP from the body that generates it from their website.
> www. fasb.org ( this won't really help you as you don't know the
> fundamentals) and  the  most countries have  joined an international
> standard setting body  called  IFAC. Each country has joined and the
> GAAP and audit standards would be covered by them. Good luck.
>
> With respect to fixed assets, Sql doesn't have a subledger for fixed
> assets that can maintain details about each piece of equipment,
> machinery or furniture. Perhaps you can request it as a future project.
>
> If I am totally off mark with your GAAP certification question- please
> educate me.
>
> Joe
>
> www.joemaffia.com
>
>
>
> Vincenzo Puliatti wrote:
> >> Good morning,
> >>
> >> My name is Enzo Puliatti. I am the Chairman of IT Synergy (
> www.itsyn.com ). We have an ongoing project aimed to spread the usage of
> SQL-Ledger for SMEs in Egypt and we are working on many localization and
> customization issues. However, we have recently faced a bureaucratic
> >> issue and we are trying to find out if there is any experience on GAAP
> certification for SQL-Ledger or at least a clear "how-to do". Have you
> done anything in this sense in your  country or are you aware of any
> successful or ongoing effort in this senses?
> >> I do understand that this may be different from country to country but
> we would like to start from some established experience. If nobody has
> collected these procedure we are most willing to collect all information
> and share it with all you.
> >> For those of you that (like me) are not to familiar with accounting
> procedures and rules, the  idea is to be able to completely replace
> manual bookkeeping (or "hybrid") with a fully computerized one using
> SQL-Ledger. I personally don't like the idea of using SL in my company
> and then having the accountant manually copying the information in a
> different format to present it to the relevant authorities.
> >> A second issue is related to management of fixed assets. I have seen
> several scattered posting about this issue without a clearly defined
> procedures. This topic is also not mentioned in the manual and other
> documentation that I have found online.
> >> The basic question is: how to treat the purchasing, inventorying and
> depreciation of fixed assets and other consumable that are meant to be
> used for the company itself and not for resale?
> >> Thanks and regards,
> >> Enzo Puliatti
> >>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to
> share your
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash
> http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV
> _______________________________________________
> sql-ledger-users mailing list
> sql...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/sql-ledger-users
>
> -- 
>
> _____________
> Vincenzo Puliatti
> Chairman,IT Synergy
> Cairo Smart Village, Egypt
> +20 2 5371020
> www.itsyn.com
>