Overview
The Chart of Accounts (COA) represents the structure through which financial transaction data is organized and reported through UC San Diego financial systems.
Essential Information
- New requests will not be processed for certain Chart of Accounts (COA) segments.
- The segments listed in Steps to Take, represent the segments that may be requested by departments.
- Requests for new or changes to General Ledger COA segments will require VC approval, an attachment of an approval email with the justification is required to process new/change segment requests.
- ICA will provide final review and approval via the Services & Support ticket.
- You may request/attach more than one COA segment to a case i.e., request a Fund and Financial Unit within the same Services & Support ticket.
- After an update is completed in Oracle, updates to associated systems may take 2 days/nights to transfer.
- Submit Chart of Accounts requests as a Services & Support ticket with the following parameters:
About: Financial Accounting
Related To: Chart of Accounts
More Specifically: Chart of Accounts Inquiries
Next Steps
Be aware of special characters in COA names, values, or descriptions. Refer to the table at end for further guidance.
Account
- An Account is an Asset, Liability, Revenue, Expense, or Fund Balance
- Account requests include:
- New Accounts
- Expenditure Types on an existing Expense Account (VC approval is not required for new/changes to Expenditure Types)
- Closing an Account
- Download, complete, and attach the Account request form to the case
- New General Ledger Accounts will be limited because the use of expenditure types is encouraged for reporting details.
Financial Unit
- A Financial Unit:
- Represents a FinUnit with an ongoing business objective
- Responsible individual with fiscal authority over budget and costs
- Identifiable group of employees, and generally a physical space
- Every FinUnit must submit its own budget.
- FinUnit are also used for approvals, routing, and authorizations.
- A Financial Unit is NOT:
- a subunit or team within a Financial Unit
- a Capital Project
- tied to a Function
- a Recharge operation within a department
- a physical location, such as a building or facility
1. Download, complete, and attach the Financial Unit request form to the case
2. After the Financial Unit is approved and created, submit Oracle and Concur Role Request
-
- Roles and approvers need to be assigned to the Financial Unit in order to transact with the Financial Unit.
- In order for transactions to be approved for the Financial Unit, workflow approver roles must be assigned.
Fund
Activity
- An Activity is used for Merchant Accounts and internal loan tracking only
- Activity requests are when:
- The new Merchant Account needs posting to the Credit Card Clearing Merchant Account (Oracle account 101030)
- A change or close to a Merchant Account
- An Internal Loan is used for Debt, Treasury, or Equipment
- Download, complete, and attach the Activity request form to the case
Location
Guidelines for COA Values and Descriptions
| Special Characters in COA | Description | Guidance |
| . | Period | Do not use |
| _ | Underscore | Do not use |
| () | Parentheses | Do not use |
| ' | Single Quotation | Do not use |
| | | Vertical Bar | Do not use |
| @ | at sign | Do not use |
| + | Plus sign | Do not use |
| \ | Backslash | Do not use |
| , | Comma | Do not use, replace with a forward slash / |
| & | Ampersand | Do not use, replace with the word "and" |
| = < > | Equal, less than, greater than | Do not use, replace with words |
| - | Hyphen | Try not to use |
Additional Formatting Tips:
- Check for spelling
- Abbreviations should be consistent and understood by general campus
- Click here for common Acronyms and Abbreviations at UCSD
- Capitalize the first letter of most words, e.g. Materials Science Program, Center for Extreme Events