Eliminate Thousands of Cross-validation Rules
You need to eliminate thousands of cross-validation rules.
Problem
A financial services company had over 2000 cross validation rules to enforce which departments could use which cost centers and accounts. In their current chart of accounts, they had run out of digits in the ranges that were defined, so the structure that was supposed to have Revenue starting from 1000 to 1999, Liabilities from 2000 to 2999, Expenses from 3000 to 3999, Assets from 4000 to 4999, and owner’s equity from 6000 to 6999 now looked like this:
| 1000 - 1999 | Revenue |
| 5000 - 5499 | Revenue |
| 5700 - 5999 | Revenue |
| 2000 - 2999 | Liability |
| 5500 - 5699 | Assets |
| 7000 - 7199 | Liability |
| 7200 - 7250 | Expenses |
| 7251 - 7269 | Assets |
| 7270 - 7999 | Expenses |
| 8000 - 8399 | Assets |
| 8400 - 8499 | Liability |
| 8500 - 8999 | Expenses |
| 9000 - 9010 | Owner's Equity |
| 9011 - 9198 | Revenue |
| 9199 - 9399 | Expenses |
| 9399 - 9999 | Randomly assigned to different account types |
It was almost impossible to remember what account went with which cost centers for each department. Every time the company wanted to add a new value, they had to rearrange all their cross validation rules. Maintenance on the chart of accounts was taking days each year end when they added new tax accounts.
Solution
The company expanded their account segment to 6 digits using FlexField software, put everything in ranges, and went down to a total of 17 cross-validation rules. There was no longer any maintenance to add new accounts or new departments. As an aside, they were also able to streamline their reporting so new reports were generated quickly.
