A move operation transfers balances from one or more source accounts to one or more target accounts. In the Mass Maintenance Workbench window, you use one account specification each to define the source accounts and the target accounts.

For example, assume your account has a cost center segment that you use to represent operations centers. Assume also that you have just closed one of your centers (#683) and want another center (#357) to absorb center #683's inventory and operations. For accounting and reporting purposes, you now want center #683's account balances reflected in center #357's accounts. You can do this with a move operation. Assuming you use a four segment account, with cost center as the second segment, the source and target specifications in the Mass Maintenance Workbench window are:

Source specification: 01. 683 . . Target specification: 01 . 357 . .

Note that you only have to specify a value for the cost center segment and the balancing segment. You cannot leave the balancing segment blank. By leaving the other segments blank, your move/merge operation will move all account balances for all values of the other segments when the cost center value is 683.

A merge operation transfers balances from multiple source accounts into one or more target accounts. In the Mass Maintenance Workbench window, multiple account specifications are used to define the source accounts while the same account specification is used to define the target accounts.

For example, assume that you want to merge the balances from three costs centers (575, 683, and 937) into one (357). The source and target specifications in the Mass Maintenance Workbench window are:

Source specification: 01. 575 . . Target specification: 01. 357 . .

Source specification: 01. 683 . . Target specification: 01. 357 . .

Source specification: 01. 937 . . Target specification: 01. 357 . .

Business Rules

• You cannot move/merge across ledgers.

• If you submit a move/merge request for a ledger set, a parent request will be automatically submitted along with multiple child requests, one for each ledger in the ledger set.

• You cannot move/merge across balancing segment values. For example, if your balancing segment is company, you cannot move balances from one company to another.

• You cannot move/merge across financial statement categories. For example, you cannot move a balance sheet account balance to an income statement account. You can move/merge within categories, except for equity accounts. For example, you can move/merge an asset balance to a liability account.

• You cannot move/merge budget or encumbrance balances.

• You cannot move or merge the balances of purged accounting periods. However, since current balances are based on the purged periods, General Ledger will adjust the quarter-to-date, year-to-date, project-to-date, period-average-to-date, quarter-average-to-date, and year-average-to-date balances of your source and target accounts in the earliest unpurged period.

• Move/merge operations will not update the accounts and account ranges used in any General Ledger definitions, such as recurring journals, mass allocations, consolidation mappings, and summary accounts.

• If any source accounts have historical rates assigned, you must update or create the historical rates for the target accounts. The rates will not be updated or created during the move/merge.

• If you have budgetary control enabled in your ledger, funds checking and reservation does not validate move/merge adjustments to your source and target accounts.

• If you enabled the Track by Secondary Segment option for your ledger, running the Mass Maintenance Move/Merge option inappropriately may cause your retained earnings accounts balances to be incorrect. We recommend that you only move balances within the same balancing segment value and secondary tracking segment value during Move/Merge to maintain the accuracy of the retained earnings account. Otherwise, you should use manual journal adjustments when crossing balancing segment and secondary tracking segment values in your reclassifications. The Move/Merge program bypasses the Posting program, updating General Ledger balances directly. The Posting program correctly updates the retained earnings accounts.

  See: Secondary Tracking Segment

• Special rules for net income accounts (average balance processing): Balances for the Net Income account will never be moved/merged. If a net income account is among the source/target accounts, the move/merge operation will be aborted during the Validation process.

Reporting Currencies

When you move/merge balances for a ledger, the balances for all of the ledger's reporting currencies (Journal or Subledger level) will also be moved/merged. You cannot execute a move/merge operation for a reporting currency directly. A reporting currency's balances can only be moved/merged through its source ledger, such as a primary ledger or secondary ledger.

When you execute a move/merge operation for a ledger that has reporting currencies assigned (Journal or Subledger level), move/merge will be executed in each reporting currency, regardless if your data access set provides full read and write access to the reporting currency

What Move/Merge Does

If no errors are encountered, a move/merge will perform the following steps before it finishes processing:

• Validate accounts (See: Validation and Prevalidation)

• Create target accounts that don't already exist

• Calculate balances to be moved or merged

• Calculate amounts to adjust quarter-to-date, year-to-date, project-to-date, period-average-to-date, quarter-average-to-date, and year-average-to-date balances

• Move/merge the calculated balances

• Create move/merge audit journals

• Produce the Mass Maintenance Execution Report

Translated Balances

After a successful move/merge operation, translated balances will be out of date. You must run General Ledger's Translation program for each balance level reporting currency to update your translated balances.