A very widely used standalone management and financial accounting system developed to meet the requirements of the NHS and Charity Commission.

Background to the Leicestershire Charitable Funds Systems

The system was originally designed in 1983 to meet the information needs of the Leicestershire Health Authority Finance Department’s Trust Fund Accountant. The system was written to be able to be adopted by other Authorities primarily in the Trent Region although it was adopted at sites across the NHS. The copyright of the system was with the Trustees of Leicestershire Health Authority Charitable funds until 1^st April 1997.

The system’s design was validated by a panel within Leicestershire Health Authority including the Accountant, Chief internal Auditor and Fund Holder representatives. This has ensure that the correct functionality was included and appropriate financial controls have been incorporated at the design stage rather than being required to be grafted on subsequently.

The software has been updated from time to time during its life. Since taking control of the system Ethitec has invested in two new releases to bring the system in line with the new accounting requirements and to make the system fully year 2000 compliant. In addition a formal independent User Group has been formed to ensure that improvements to the system are properly considered and implemented in a timely and relevant manner.

Outline Functionality

The system is broken down into a number of modules for ease of use. All modules interact to provide the full range of functionality required. The system is fully double entry accounting with the opposite entries being generated by the system.

Investment Register - Used to record the details of investments such as stocks shares and properties which potentially generate both an income and capital growth. Appropriate details of purchases, sales and revaluations are held. The module includes an easy to use revaluation routine to meet current regulations.

Funds Register - Used to record details of the individual funds within an umbrella charity. Funds can be Endowment, Restricted, Designated or Non Designated. Where you have sub-registrations within the umbrella this information can also be stored. All transactions pertaining to a fund can be stored with appropriate user defined income and expenditure subjective codes being used to support annual accounts requirements.

Extensive reporting is supported including the download of information to spreadsheets.

A key feature of the system is the apportionment routines for pooled Profits (or losses) from sale of investments, Income from investments and Administration charges. These routines can be run on either actual or averaged balances.

Ledger module - Home of most of the automatically generated opposite double entries, direct input to this module is largely restricted to movements between bank accounts and other income only investments. Year end Sundry Debtor and Creditor ledgers as well as tax reclaim plus any other site specific requirements are all supported.

Creditors Payment Module - Supports the entry of unpaid invoices prior to validation, then payments processing where the entries are then posted to the funds and ledgers as appropriate. As well as invoices, credit notes can also be posted. At year end the opposite entries can be posted automatically into the sundry creditor account. Posted entries are held in a paid invoice file for duplicate payment checking purposes. As well as posting the unpaid invoices, cheques and remittance advices can be printed.

Reporting and Parameter file - The system is fully flexible in that all variable information (e.g. Location names, Investment categories, Ledger titles, Subjective codes, Sub- registration groups etc.) are all user definable and stored in a parameter file. Reporting is supported in each module giving comprehensive access to all data held on the system. In addition there is an user defined annual accounts report which brings information from all parts of the system together to form the major CTF reports and notes to the accounts.

Year End Roll-over - Each year’s data is held in a separate set of datafiles thus enabling old and new years data to "open" at the same time. Routines are available to keep old & new years in step when they are both open. This facility means that there does not have to be an accumulation of outstanding work for the new financial year whilst the old year accounts are prepared.