7.1 Financial Ledger

Note: The information on this page reflects Beacon functionality prior to the introduction of the following changes introduced in 2024:

• 7.10.6. Opening Balance for Groups 
  
  
• 7.10.7 Refunds

For u3a's that have not enabled 'Opening Balance for Groups' or 'Refunds', the look of Beacon will remain as shown on this page.

Overview of the Ledger

Beacon's Financial Ledger is a collection of transactions showing all monies received or paid.  All transactions are associated with an Account. These can mirror bank account(s), PayPal accounts, Cash in hand or be transitory accounts to represent unbanked cheques and cash. Refer to 7.10 Financial Approaches for guidance on how to configure your Beacon Accounts.

All Transactions are assigned to one or more Financial Categories in order to group together similar expenditure and income for analysis and reporting.

The Ledger may be displayed by Account, Category or Group by selecting the appropriate option on the Home Page. All options produce a similar listing. The Account, Category or Group is selected at the top of the page together with the Financial Year. By default, the current financial year is shown. The Ledger may be sorted by clicking any of the column headings that are in blue text.

Note: While any Transaction can be associated with a Group, the Transactions in the main Ledger described below are completely separate to those in the individual Group Ledgers (see 5.5 Group Record: Ledger).

1. Ledger by Account
Click Ledger (by account) from the Home page:

Choose the Account and the Year to be viewed.

To download the Ledger in Excel or pdf format, click one the appropriate button below the table:

There are example Excel and pdf downloads at the bottom of this page.

Click a Transaction number in the left column to view details of the Transaction:

         

2. Ledger by Category
Click Ledger (by category) from the Home page and choose the Category and the Year to be viewed:

The operations available from this page are similar to those described above for Ledger by Account.

3. Ledger by Group
Click Ledger (by group) from the Home page and choose the Year to be viewed and the Group (or select all to see all Groups).

The operations available from this page are similar to those described above for Ledger by Account.

Note: While the Ledger by Account and Ledger by Category pages are typically only available to Treasurers, the Ledger by Group page can be viewed (but not edited) by any Group Leader that has been given the privilege to view Group Ledger (as Leader). The Group Leader can only view transactions related to the groups for which they are the Leader.

Updating the Brought Forward
When the financial year rolls over, a Brought Forward for each account is calculated automatically by Beacon. However, it could be that at the end of a financial year not all of last year's Transactions have been entered, or it may be necessary to subsequently change one or more Transactions in the previous year.

To update the Brought Forward amount, press the Update B/F button at the top of the Ledger by account page.

Note 1: The Update B/F button is only present when the current year's Ledger is displayed. It is not possible to change the brought forward to any year except the present. It is therefore important that the user does update the current year’s B/F before the financial year-end if changes have been made to last year’s data.

Note 2: The function operates only on the currently displayed account. To update other accounts, they must be displayed individually and updated.

Note 3: B/F is always dated the first day of the year. For each active Account, the B/F is automatically calculated at the start of the year, within the Rollover function. Note that the Rollover function does various jobs and runs once a day, currently during the first login of any user for the specific u3a.

Transaction Records
Refer to section 7.2 for details of how to create and edit a Transaction.

Transferring Money
 Refer to section 7.3 for details of how to transfer money between Accounts.

Credit Batches
When several payments (cheques and cash) are paid into a bank at the same time, it is usual for a bank statement to record only the total amount, not each individual cheque. This can make it difficult to reconcile the statement against individual transactions.

Credit Batches are a facility to make reconciliation simpler. All cheques and cash paid in at one time are each assigned to a Credit Batch and the batch will then appear in the reconciliation listing. When the bank statement entry is reconciled against the Credit Batch, the component Transactions are reconciled automatically.

Refer to section 7.4 for further details.

Reconciling
Reconciliation is the process of ensuring that Beacon's Ledger and your u3a’s bank statements are synchronised, enabling any discrepancies to be identified.

Refer to section 7.5 for further details.

Financial statement
Refer to section 7.6 for details of how to download a Financial Statement for any year or account.

Groups Statement
Refer to section 7.7 for details of how to view a summary of every Group's accounts (as held in the Group Ledgers, see section 5.5).

Gift Aid
As registered charities, u3a's are eligible to claim Gift Aid relief on membership subscriptions and donations. Refer to section 7.8 for further details.

PayPal
To accept payment online for members joining or renewing their membership, your u3a will need to set up its own PayPal account and register as a charity with PayPal.  Refer to section 7.9 for further details.

Example Excel Download 

 Example pdf Download

Revision History

v2	2021-04-23	Lyn Bossons	Merged KB 'Brought Forward' article at beginning
v3	2024-04-09	Graeme Bunting	Pending Transactions added
v4	2024-06-02	Graeme Bunting	Added reference to 7.10.6. Opening Balance for Groups
v5	2024-06-13	Graeme Bunting	Group Leaders with the view privilege for Group ledger (as leader) can now view the Ledger by Group page
v6	2024-09-02	Graeme Bunting	Added reference to 7.10.7 Refunds