Create, amend, and view a nominal account
Find this screen
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > New Nominal Account
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Amend Nominal Account
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Enquiries > View Nominal Account
How to
Create a new nominal account
Use this when you need to create an individual nominal account.
Tip: If you want to create nominal accounts for the same code, but for different cost centre and department combinations, the Generate Accounts feature is much quicker (
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > New Nominal Account
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Enter the nominal account Code.
Use up to 8 characters, which can be numbers or letters. Each nominal account must have a unique nominal code.
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Enter a Name to describe the account.
When you select nominal accounts, this name is displayed next to the account code.
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Set the Active Status:
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If you want to use the account straight away, set this to Active to display it in nominal account lists.
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If you don't want anyone to use the nominal account yet, set it to Hidden.
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Set an optional Cost Centre and Department.
Cost Centre / Department: Cost centres and departments are codes that you can add to your profit and loss nominal accounts, to help keep track of your income and expenses. These are used to divide your accounts and produce a separate Profit and Loss report for different parts of your business.
Cost Centre (funds): Cost centres are used to represent your funds. You can apply a Cost Centre to nominal accounts that you use to record your income and expenditure (Profit and Loss) related to a fund. These nominal accounts should also have a SOFA category. Only income and expense accounts for non-education services may not have a cost centre.
Department: Departments are codes that you can add to profit and loss nominal accounts, to help keep track of your income and expenses.
You must have set up your cost centres and departments first
Note: Once a nominal account has been saved, you can't change its Code, Cost Centre, or Department.
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Enter your nominal account information on the following tabs:
Account Nominal account settings, such as the report category,
Analysis Codes Use analysis codes as extra pieces of information that you can use to improve your reporting and to compare different areas of your business.
Budget This Year Budget Future Years
Set budgets for the nominal account, for this year and future years.
Memo Comments about the nominal account, such as reminders about issues that should be taken into consideration.
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When you've finished setting up your account, select Save.
Every nominal account must have a Code, Report category code and Account Type before it can be saved.
Amend a nominal account
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Amend Nominal Account
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Once a nominal account has been saved, you can't change its Code, Cost Centre, or Department.
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If you've created an account with wrong Code, Cost Centre or Department, and haven't entered any transactions, then delete the account and recreate it.
Hide or show a nominal account
You might hide a nominal account when you're no longer using the account, or have created a new account that you don't want to be used yet.
This removes the nominal account from lists and helps prevent the account being selected by mistake.
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Amend Nominal Account
- To hide the nominal account, set the Active Status to Hidden.
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To show a hidden nominal account, set the Active Status to Active.
See About hiding nominal accounts.
View a nominal account
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Enquiries > View Nominal Account
This is useful if you don't have access to create or amend nominal accounts, but need to view account details such as the budget or memos.
Delete a nominal account
You can delete a nominal account that you no longer want to use, but only if:
- The account has a balance of zero.
- The account has no transactions posted to it
- The account is not set as the Suspense default nominal account.
Open: Nominal Ledger > Nominal Accounts > Amend Nominal Account
- Select the nominal account.
- Select Delete.
Tip: You can also hide nominal accounts that you're no longer using, if you can't delete them. This removes the nominal account from lists and helps prevent the account being selected by mistake. See Hide or show a nominal account.
Useful info
About hiding nominal accounts
You might hide a nominal account when you're no longer using the account, or have created a new account that you don't want to be used yet.
This removes the nominal account from lists and helps prevent the account being selected by mistake.
You can hide an account at any time, even if the account is in use, so it's best to use this carefully.
Transactions that are already linked to the nominal account can still be processed and posted to the nominal account.
If the account has been hidden by mistake, just amend the account and set the Active Status to Active.
Cost centres
You can use cost centres to segment parts of your business so that you can monitor income and expenses from individual areas in your company. You append a cost centre to profit and loss nominal accounts. Each nominal account has the same Code but different cost centres.
For example, you have several branch offices and you want to be able to produce a Profit and Loss for each office, as well as one for the whole business. You create a cost centre for each branch office: London (LON), Manchester (MAN) and Birmingham (BIR). Then you make sure that every profit and loss nominal account is set up with a cost centre for each branch.
| Nominal Account Code | Cost Centre |
|---|---|
| 7502 | |
| 7502 | LON |
| 7502 | MAN |
| 7502 | BIR |
When you enter transactions, these are posted to the nominal account associated with this cost centre. When you produce your Profit and Loss, it reports the total of all accounts with the same code.
Tip: As all these nominal accounts are reporting the same thing, they should also have the same Report category code.
Cost centres are used to represent your funds. You'll need to select a cost centre (fund) for any nominal accounts that will be used to record the income and expenditure of your funds. This is likely to be the majority of your income and expense (Profit and Loss) accounts. Most of your balance sheet nominal accounts will not need to be related to a fund, so these accounts don't need to have cost centres.
If you're an Academy, any nominal accounts linked to a cost centre with a fund type and a SOFA category are included on the SOFA report.
Departments
Departments are codes that you can add to profit and loss nominal accounts, to help keep track of your income and expenses.
Each nominal account can have the nominal code, but have different departments.
For example, you might create two department for Administration ADM and Sales SAL, and apply these to your nominal codes as shown.
| Nominal Account Code | Cost Centre | Department |
|---|---|---|
| 7502 | LON | ADM |
| 7502 | LON | SAL |
| 7502 | MAN | ADM |
| 7502 | MAN | SAL |
| 7502 | BIR | ADM |
| 7502 | BIR | SAL |
Departments are additional codes that you can add to profit and loss nominal accounts, to help keep track of your income and expenses in a particular area.
For example:
- A primary school might set up a department for each year, from Nursery to Year 6.
- A secondary school might set up a department for each teaching subject area, such as English, Mathematics and Art.
Each nominal account has the same code but with different departments.
The majority of our income and expense accounts will already have a cost centre, so by adding departments your nominal accounts might look something like this:
| Nominal Account Code | Cost Centre | Department |
|---|---|---|
| 5026 | FAF | ENG |
| 5026 | FAF | ICT |
| 5026 | FAF | MTH |
| 5026 | GAG | ENG |
| 5026 | GAG | ICT |
| 5026 | GAG | MTH |
| 5026 | PP | ENG |
| 5026 | PP | ICT |
| 5026 | PP | MTH |