PFM Domain CORE PUBLIC FINANCIALS

Good Practice MULTIPLE YEAR CHART OF ACCOUNTS

Applicable ALL COUNTRIES, ALL TIERS OF GOVERNMENT

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Public Financial Management Good Practices

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why is the Chart of Accounts critical in government financials?

Many governments are increasingly adopting Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software to replace legacy and custom developed software applications for financial, budget, expenditure, tax, treasury and civil service management.

Government organizations can chose to acquire Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software from large software firms whose software is used in multiple “vertical” markets or Government Resource Planning (GRP) software designed exclusively for governments.

Government budget classifications, often called Charts of Accounts (COAs), represent the underlying meta data for Public Financial Management (PFM) for statutory financial statements and decision-support.

COAs tend to be more complex in government than in the private sector. Government COAs include multiple segments such as fund, organization, program, economic purpose, geography and object. COAs are often consolidated across agencies and departments or across all government levels.

Government COAs capture budget and allocation information, support international standards, provide reporting information and are increasingly used to map government objectives to performance outcomes.

what is the COA challenge in government?

Government organizations are challenged to adapt COAs to support modernization such as the introduction of program budgeting, accrual accounting or new national reporting. Changes within the organizational structure of government are also commonplace requiring changes to the classification

structure.

Many countries should improve Budget Classifications according to Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) reviews.

Many governments are reforming financial reporting to support international standards such as the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS), International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG), Government Finance Statistics (GFS), International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), and the eXtended Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

Many governments find that underlying custom-developed or Commercial-off-

the-Shelf (COTS) ERP software make changes to COAs difficult.

Frequent changes to COAs across fiscal years makes reporting and comparison difficult. Budget preparation and analysis requires the ability to compare information across fiscal years even though that information is classified

differently.

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what are some good COA practices?

Integration of budget and accounting classifications: in countries where the budget classifications are not integrated with the COA, or only partially integrated, there is risk of loss of important information undermining the effectiveness of budget control and reporting.

Sufficient structure for fiscal management: the COA should include fund source, organization, economic and function classifications.

Adaptability: The COA should be able to be changed—particularly in the context of an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS)—to respond to changes such as reorganization of government and changing needs.

Simplified structure: to facilitate data entry, the structure of the COA should be intuitive and usually no more than 30 digits in total and support easy ways to find the right classifications

Reporting Objects: The COA can drive external reporting and transparency without adding any burden to data entry through the use of alternative roll-up structures or “side concepts”.

Integration with authorization: permissions and access within the GRP system should be directly linked to the COA to control access.

Error checking and validation: across COA segments so that it is impossible to associate an expense against programs or economic purposes that are not owned by a line ministry and to validate debits and credits

what is a multiple year Chart of Accounts?

The COA should allow flexibility for future additions and changes as far as possible. A multiple year COA enables governments to map across classifications through many

years including:

Reporting on any fiscal year based on the COA of any year in the system

Matching aggregate budgets and programs across multiple years

Supporting accrual accounting reporting on previous non-accrual years

Calculating the reality of cost savings initiatives like departmental consolidation or shared services

Supporting multiple year commitments and obligations even though classifications have changed

Providing full budget histories across multiple years to assist in developing more

credible budgets

Identifying cost efficiency opportunities through multiple year comparisons

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Classifications frequently change in government to accommodate organization structure, international

standards, reporting requirements, accrual accounting and performance information.

how is a multiple year COA supported

in GRP software?

COA designer in GRP software requires flexibility to change structure such as add segments, change organization alignment and re-classify some or all of the

metadata

COA designer must have ability to map classifications from year to year

Data integrity must be supported to eliminate any “orphan” COA elements

Specialized reporting objects that are not visible for data entry are enabled. This is used to roll up detailed information from the COA in different methods to support changing reporting requirements

Adding a new line item within the existing COA structure during the fiscal year

should require little effort

COA designer should support valid code combinations and standard offset accounts to reduce data entry errors

Desirable that the tool for COA design is graphical, supports XML import and

provides for draft classifications for review

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Good Practice Conclusions

1. Government Resource Planning (GRP) software should enable the modeling of complex Charts of Accounts including support for reporting objects, valid code combinations and other error-prevention techniques

2. GRP software should not require significant effort to deploy a new COA

3. GRP software should support multiple year COA to enable government decision making

There are very few “best practices” but many “good practices” in Public Financial Management.

FreeBalance, a global provider of Government Resource Planning (GRP) software and services shares good practices from experience with developed and developing country governments

around the world.

www.freebalance.com

www.freebalance.com