Blackline - Journals Integration with Lawson

Hello,

Does anyone currently utilize Blackline software, particularly their Journals module? If so, how do you interface journals data from Blackline into Lawson (we have v10)? Or would you be willing to field a few questions on how you use the system?

We currently use Blackline's Account Reconciliations and Tasks modules, but are less sure on how the interfaces should work for Journals. Our current process for entering JEs is using the GL40 Excel Add-in's/Workbook to get those into Lawson. With Blackline, we are trying to use that system's capabilities to enter journals and extract that date into Lawson.

We'd prefer to still use the GL40 process somehow as that retains both header (into GLCONTROL.tbl) and line-level/transactional data (into GLTRANS.tbl). However we've heard that GL65/GL165 can be used for this process instead. One concern with that is that it does not appear that header-level data is a part of the GL65 process (rather it only seems to be transaction-level data).

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Kyle

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Comments

unknown

We interface journals in from multiple different external systems; If you have a large number of transactions, you will like being able to use the batch processing capability of GL65/GL165. Look at the GLTRANSREL table, and look at options of populating your data directly into that table via IPA or importdb or whatever. The 'run group' acts as a 'batch id' for processing (you can have multiple batches or 'run groups' processing at the same time). The GL165 will identify any errors for whatever run groups you are running it for. Once any errors are corrected in GL65 and/or there are no errors in GL165, it will create a JE; the 'run group' will be cleared from GLTRANSREL and you will get one GLCONTROL record for each 'batch', and one record in GLTRANS for every line item - just like GL40.

You can test the GL65/GL165 process manually by just hand-keying a small two line entry directly into GL65, then running a GL165 to 'journalize' it. You don't have the full set of functionality that you do in GL40 (for example, you can't set a quarterly auto-reversal...you can only set an entry to reverse in the next period, and I don't think(?) you can set a specific journal number...it just adds 1 to the prior JE per system) but most of the functionality is there, and works great for our needs.

unknown

Thanks for the quick reply - the detail is much appreciated.

Once transactions have been interfaced from GL165, do they come over in the "Released" status? And then would not be in the "Posted" status until GL190 is ran? That's what it seemed like from looking at a process flow but wanted to confirm.

Our current workflow is such that preparers can release their own entries so that preliminary transaction/balance data gets into Lawson in a released state. But then the transactions are not posted/finalized until reviewed by an approver at which point we run GL190.

And then is there any other functionality loss that you've noticed from using GL65 instead of GL40? It seems like this is the way to go with any outside system data/journals but want to be sure we're thinking through any other pitfalls.

unknown

Yes, once the GL165 completes successfully, the entry will be in a 'released' status. At that point you can see it on GL45, and it will work like any other 'released' journal entry.

The only two items that I can think of is that you can't control the JE number (that I know of), and you can only do an auto-reversal into the next period (you can't set a specific period in the future). We have asked via Enhancement Requests for the auto-reversing issue to be fixed, but it has never been addressed. There could potentially be other issues, but those are the only two that I can think of.

I want to mention this too - you can also set up your own custom system and source codes if you want; we have done that and it is helpful to differentiate those other system codes from regular journal entries (GL). For example, you could load entries from your Blackline system into system code BL or BK or whatever you want. Overall we really like this option and we use multiple custom system/source codes, but the one negative is that you can only delete GL entries from GL45. If you use system code BL or BK for your Blackline entries, and something happens and you load bad data, you can't just delete it on GL45 - the users have to do a reversing entry OR we have to delete the entry behind the scenes (gotta hit GLCONTROL and GLTRANS, but that isn't necessarily supported or recommended). It's a built-in control to prevent someone from deleting a PR entry (or AP or AM or whatever), which makes sense.

0904200117254579.pdf

unknown

Following up on this thread as we're undergoing an implementation and ended up using GL165 as our data transformation process. We noticed an oddity during testing that when we run GL165 for multiple run groups at the same time that it is "batching" all run groups as only one GLCONTROL journal entry when the same company code is used (rather than creating a separate journal entry for each run group).

For example, if we have two separate run groups (let's call them BL_1 and BL_2) that both contain GL data for Company 550, we are getting these released to GL45 as one combined entry. Instead, we were hoping that BL_1 would be one GLCONTROL entry and then BL_2 would be a second, separate GL entry.

Are there any parameters in GL165 or other configuration options in say GL65 that would help split these two up?

Any help appreciated - thanks.

0911060553270289.pdf

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