hey folks -

our auditors had another helpful comment this year.  they're suggesting that we post only summary activity to the GL and keep detail in Excel spreadsheets to avoid duplicating work.  they admit that this is only appropriate for certain accounts - for instance, our endowment asset accounts where we have a roll forward spreadsheet with investment detail.

this is so contrary to way i've always done things that i can't wrap my mind around it.  i try to put as much detail as possible into the GL so that i can pull up an account and see what's going on at a glance.  the auditors suggested that i could do the same thing but with a spreadsheet instead. 

also, i feel there's less chance of "losing" data in the GL than on a spreadsheet.  i can just picture myself saving a spreadsheet - or not saving a spreadsheet - by accident and wiping out hours of work.

any thoughts?

thanks - Joanne

 Hmmm. Use a secure structured database or unsecure, unstructured Excel. I have a real hard time grasping why that makes sense too.

There can be a case for an excel spreadsheet actually showing a more viewable detail.  in our example our foundation activity statements summarize very nicely on a spreadsheet that keeps like transactions together when looking at an entire year.  then we post only the summary of all the items that transpired.  if you want to see the detail you can view a nice spreadsheet.   you really could not see anything easily if you recorded each transaction in the GL.  that might be what they are suggesting.   otherwise, yes i run all of everything thru the GL whenever possible.

we post our endowment in total (excluding contributions) and use an excel spreadsheet for the auditors.  I can not think of any other account we do this for.