Budget Screen Forms and Reports

Chart of Accounts

The Chart of Accounts is the set of numbers that is used for tracking all financial transactions for Fisher. It provides a mechanism to report common information and a way of tracking an entity's assets and liabilities. It provides an alignment (or hierarchy) of the organization codes for the Schools and administrative departments.

What is a FOAPAL?

The term FOAPAL is an acronym used by Banner Finance. It is comprised of the first letter of the words: Fund, Organization, Account, Program, Activity, and Location. The Chart of Accounts uses each of these subsets to create unique numbers to differentiate between departments and organizations. The Fund, Organization, Account, and Program codes are the main elements used for recording and reporting department data and budget information. The Activity and Location codes are used to provide more specific detail to the FOAP.

The Fund code is the financial designation for where the money is coming from. The Fund code that is used most frequently for budgets is the general operating fund.

The Organization code describes the department or club organization that is spending the money. The Organization code often names a specific department.

The Account code defines revenues, expenses, assets, liabilities, and fund balances. It describes what the money is being spent on.

The Program code describes a function, such as instruction, institutional support, or physical plant. This code is generally used for reporting purposes.

The Activity code allows for temporary units of work, subsidiary functional classifications, or short duration projects. It allows a FOAP to have several different sub-topics and allows for reporting on that specific activity. Another feature is that the Activity can have charges from several different organizations, if required.

The Location code describes a specific place or area where the FOAP is occurring. This code is often used to define the location of a fixed asset.

The Index is an accounting code that creates a "shortcut" to specific budget areas. It automatically provides part of the FOAPAL information. For example, entering an Index automatically inserts the Fund, Organization, and Program codes.

Banner Forms and Reports for Monitoring a Budget

Banner Finance users should have a basic understanding of Banner commands and be capable of maneuvering within Banner forms and job submissions. Banner's sophisticated security features allow users to view and print only the data that they have access to.

The Faculty and Staff Banner Finance Training Manual [pdf] shows step by step commands of the common Finance functions, forms, and reports related to organizational budgets. Additionally, it also provides some purchasing guidelines.

The Banner Document Management System process, AppXtender, is a computer-client software enabling the scanning of documents into a central location.  Upon recording data into Banner, financial documents, such as invoices, are uploaded into AppXtender for reference and storage.  Banner Finance users can follow the Banner Finance AppXtender Instructions [pdf] to view their documents.