Overview
This article guides you through implementation through critical milestones and referencing other articles with specifics into certain processes along the way. Use this as your guideline and order of operations to accomplish a successful implementation. The article will help you get first set up in SoftLedger to better understand resources available, add list data like entities and chart of accounts, configure settings and automation, and the upload beginning balances/historical data if coming from another system. See links to milestones below:
This also works well as a guide to new users to softledger to better understand how core competencies within the system work.
Resources within SoftLedger
SoftLedger provides in app click by click guidance, chat, knowledge base articles, and announcements like release notes. This is all accessible through the Resource Center icon. See a video below:
Complete the List Data such as Entities and COA
This section is to add all static data like your entities as Locations, the ledger accounts, customer/vendor lists, dimensions like cost center, and even items in Inventory, or wallets in Crypto.
Set up your Locations
Create your multi-entity structure by creating SoftLedger Locations. Learn more about the association between Locations and Ledger Accounts, as well as the components of creating a Location. Review the video below to see a sample entity structure created:
~When to move to next step~
When you have created your Locations and review the structure from clicking into the Location Picker and can confirm the hierarchy and reporting currencies are correct.
Add your Chart of Accounts
Create Ledger Accounts through a Dimension Upload template(this article includes excel templates that can be used to upload your COA), and learn about the required fields for Ledger Accounts (this article includes a link to download the SoftLedger default COA) to be included in your upload. See the extensive video below for a sample COA upload, along with many considerations to producing your COA along the way:
Common considerations:
Every Account in SoftLedger is a posting account, and there are no parent and child accounts - where users can group accounts together via the fields on accounts like SubTypes and Report Group (see video).
Every Account can be set to which SoftLedger Location the Account has access to, meaning you can control Accounts to only be able to certain Locations if you wish (the recommendation is to set accounts to the global Location of ID=0 and IncludeChildrenLocation to TRUE so accounts can be used everywhere).
Balance Sheet Accounts where there is expected transactions in foreign currencies can be set to remeasure_forex=TRUE so that the account is remeasured by the user at month end when closing accounting periods.
Equity Accounts are generally set to useHistoricalRate=TRUE in multi-currency entity structures so that equity accounts consolidate up the entity structure based on the transaction date foreign currency rate.
Digital Asset customers should NOT create Ledger Accounts for Crypto Coin Asset, Fee, or Realized Gain/Loss, as this is done by the system automatically when a Crypto Coin is created (see video).
~When to move to next step~
Once you have your chart of accounts in place, to the best of your knowledge, as you can always come back and amend, remove, redo completely before getting to later stages with adding transactional data.
Add other Dimensions and List Data
Optionally create other dimensions such as the below to be able to add contextual data (e.g. departments as Cost Centers), as well as create your extensive Customer or Vendor lists through the same Dimension Upload process.
Cost Centers and other Dimensions
Cost Centers and other Dimensions
Add more dimensionality for context to line items within transactions, with up to a total of 6 dimensions possible. Dimensions are a great way to reduce the chart of accounts, but retain the ability to break up activity in reporting to better understand your organization. See a video for more details:
See the articles for each dimension below, and remember that you can download the upload templates from Dimension Upload:
Customers and Vendors
Customers and Vendors
Bring in customer lists to use on receivables such as AR Invoices and Inventory Sales Orders, and vendor lists to use on payables such as AP Bills and Inventory Purchase Orders. Customers and Vendors can also be tagged on Journal Entries outside of those modules, similar to a Dimension, to add more context to journal activity. See a video below:
Common Considerations:
The Customer and Vendor Numbers are assigned by the system on upload
The Customer and Vendor Numbers are what is used within bulk excel documents when uploading transactions.
Inventory such as Items and Warehouses
Inventory such as Items and Warehouses
For physical inventory, all your Items, Warehouses, Stock Adjustments, Vendor Prices, and Parts Numbers can be uploaded through a template found in the Dimension Upload section.
Digital Assets
Digital Assets
For digital asset customers, the first step is to create Coins in the Crypto module to represent the digital assets being tracked. There can be custom fields added to coins, and as many representations of a particular Coin can be created to segment cost basis and ledger accounts between activity.
In addition, you can upload your wallets through a template found in the Dimension Upload section. Wallets represent each source of your crypto activity, such as onchain wallets, exchange wallets, and even cold storage of assets.
~When to move to next step~
Once you have added all of the static data above that is required for setting default accounts, and bringing in historical or beginning balance data. The details created in this stage can be easily edited/deleted before adding activity against them.
System Configuration & Customization
Add your Fiscal Year
To be able to add any transactions into the system, a fiscal year is required for the posted date of the transaction you are creating. This means that a 12 month fiscal period must be created for the current period, as well as any historical period the system will cover with historical data. For example, for a calendar year fiscal year system with data going back toJanuary of 2018, fiscal periods for 2018, 2019, 2020, etc. must be created before adding activity. Learn more about the accounting periods section, as well as the How do I close the month and fiscal years?
Adjust your System Settings
With the Ledger Accounts in place, be sure to set automations and required Ledger Accounts under the Settings>Accounts section to maximize efficiency and controls. Review the System Settings to adjust displays such as date format, currency as code or symbol, tax amount options, etc.
Connect your Bank Accounts
To be able to maximize the coverage from connected bank accounts through Plaid, connect the account as soon as possible so historical data dates back as far as possible. Bank regulations can restrict how far back Plaid is able to retrieve data from the individual banking APIs, so customers generally connect their Bank Accounts immediately. Note: A Bank Connection through Plaid will only bring bank transactions in as a view only table UNTIL a user takes action on the data to create Journal Entries. Before that action, connecting the Bank Account will have no impact on the GL.
Customize and Map Financial Statements
Customize and adjust your Financial Statements to match your jurisdiction's reporting requirements (e.g. IFRS, GAAP, etc.). You can customize multiple versions of the financial statements directly in the Reporting module by clicking Edit Layout and adjusting before saving. See the Customized Report Layout article for more details
User Roles and Permissions
Adjust the Roles and Permissions available for each users, by assigning full access, preparer and approver level Roles, or removing Modules that are not relevant for your operations under the Admin>Users section. This section is also where new users can be added, multi factor authentication can be enabled/disabled, and details around what each Role can do are provided.
Beginning Balance or Historical Data Upload
With your system set up with necessary list data (e.g. Location, Accounts, etc.), along with the correct configurations, users can now bring in transactional activity through beginning balances or historical data uploads.
Contact your SoftLedger support team through the in app chat in lower left of you application, or at support@softledger.com via email.