In FAMIS, Subsidiary Ledger (SL) accounts are six-digit numbers used to track revenues, expenses, budgets and encumbrances for a single department and purpose.
Other accounting systems may use the term “cost center” or “profit center” to describe the entity at which revenues and expenses are tracked and budgets are managed. In FAMIS, these are simply referred to as SL accounts.
In FAMIS, SL accounts must be used to record detailed revenue and expense activity. The full set of revenue and expense subcodes are only available at the SL account level. Additionally, SL accounts are required for budgets and encumbrances.
Each SL account in FAMIS:
- Belongs to a single system member (two-character campus code)
- Is associated with a fiscal year,
- Is associated with a primary department,
- May, or may not contain support accounts, and
- Is always mapped to a single General Ledger (GL) account (see Core Concept: General Ledger (GL) Accounts).
Example
17-300500 – Athletics Operating
- This is an SL account fund for the athletic department at system member 17.
- The SL account number will always begin with a number (1 through 9).
- In the FAMIS implementation, no support accounts begin with 7 because SL accounts are not used in the Loans or Endowments fund group.
- The first digit of the SL account number associates the SL account to a fund group. Sometimes this character is referred to as a “ledger.”
- 1 – Education and General
- 2 – Designated
- 3 – Auxiliary
- 4, 5 or 6 – Restricted
- 8 – Plant funds
- 9 – Agency Funds
- Internally, FAMIS keeps SL activity separate by fiscal year. Prior fiscal year ledger summaries are always available.
Since SL accounts are cost centers, they must be combined with revenue or expense subcodes in order to be referenced in an accounting transaction.
In the example above, 17-300500-4010 would be an account used in an accounting transaction: supplies for the Texas A&M University-Kingsville athletic department.
Support Account (SA)
Support Accounts (SAs) are essentially subaccounts of SL accounts. At the time FAMIS was developed, the choice of the term “support accounts” was made to distinguish SAs from SL accounts, but it is correct to think SAs and sub-SL accounts.
SAs are five-digit numbers that are added to the SL account in an accounting transaction.
Internally, FAMIS always creates and sets up SA zero (00000) when any SL account is created. SA zero is always used by default if no other SAs are created.