Automatic Journals

There are two ways of creating acquisition calculations in IBM® Cognos Controller; you either base them on the data in the investments register or on the period data. The result of the calculations is booked as automatic journals.

Automatic journals are posted on the companies or groups. Intercompany eliminations are a type of automatic journals, these can be posted either as company journals or as group journals.

The automatic journals based on the period database are flexible. There are a large number of predefined automatic journals for different use and it is also possible to build your own journals. The automatic journals based on the investments register are more fixed and are designed to handle complex ownership. The investments register is used to keep track of purchases, sales and depreciation for subsidiaries.

The Base Currency must be selected with two decimals to avoid rounding issues in posting of Automatic Journals which could result in unbalanced bookings. The rounded amounts may sometimes appear on the summation account which includes odd figures. If in the Company Structure is defined sub-group with different Local Currency than the Base Currency, then also for this Active Currency must be set up two decimals to obtain correctly consolidated data on sub-group levels.