Representing accounting consequences of activities

[Screwtape]

Hi! I'm trying to model a set of processes in BPMN, which include buying, stock movements etc., and each of these physical processes has an accounting consequence.

Is there any accepted way of showing the debit/credit impacts of an activity? Googling hasn't come up with anything useful.

Thanks!

[Jacob Vos]

Hi,

Are you looking for a parameter at an activity that indicates the debit/credit impact of it? If so: that isn't present in BPMN.

Or do you want to model activities like 'Make credit journal entry' and to record the relation between those activities and the related 'physical' activities?

- Jacob

[Screwtape]

Hi! Thanks for the reply.

Somewhere between the two. I currently have a "flowchart" of how the financial process works, which I want to incorporate into the physical business process, so there is one version of the truth, as part of the problem I'm facing is so many "process diagrams" from different area's points of view.

I kind of want to see the financial impact of an activity on the diagram without it taking over the whole diagram, hence not having a separate "credit this account" and "debit this account" activity.

It seems something that just isn't done, as I've not found any previous discussions of this, except for one academic paper, which was too academic to be useful to me.

[qwerty]

Hi! I'm trying to model a set of processes in BPMN, which include buying, stock movements etc., and each of these physical processes has an accounting consequence.

Is there any accepted way of showing the debit/credit impacts of an activity? Googling hasn't come up with anything useful.

Thanks!

Why not simply showing debit/credit as some kind of artifact with a dependency from the according activity?

q.

[Jacob Vos]

Let's get clear what you exactly want to model. Only the facts 'activity has debit impact' and 'activity has credit impact'? Or only the fact 'activity has debit/credit impact'? Or maybe more details?

(A solution could be to use a data object which would represent a journal entry. Another solution could be to use an intermediate throwing event of type 'Signal' that tells a debit/credit position originated. But... it looks like a work-around and depends on what you want to reach with your model.)

By the way: do you want to stay within the 'BPMN boundaries' or is everything OK that can be done within Sparx EA?

- Jacob

[KP]

Consider using colour: activities with a debit impact are red/pink, activities with a credit impact are green. (And don't forget to add a Diagram Legend element to the diagram).

[mcoletti]

Hi, I suggest using data elements for each GL account (eg. 'Vendor' 'Material' 'IRGR' 'Bank').
Then associate each Activity with the "accounts/data elements" with an accounting impact.
You can add a tagged value to the association ("posting" or "sign" or "DB/CR") and the corresponding debit/credit value.
In this way, you can also display - on a Relationship Matrix - all the Activity that have an accounting impact (and the sign, using Overlays) with all the accounts.
Regards,
Massimo