Changing the retained earnings account in General Ledger is pretty easy. Just go to the define Set of Books form and change the retained earnings account. But is this a proper method?
No it isn’t. If you change the retained earnings since 11i there will be a warning displayed. In this warning also the steps that you have to perform are displayed.
This warning appears if you change the retained earnings account from one account into another account. Off course this new account must exist in your SOB.
The most easy way of changing this account is during year-end proces. So book all the journals you need on the last day of the calendar you use.
First you have to make the amounts booked on the accounts with account type Expense or Revenue 0 (zero). So you must make clear which accounts have the type Expense or Revenue. When this is clear, run the trial balance – detail report, with YTD (year-to-date) option.
On this report you can see the value that’s booked on your accounts. Save this report as a .txt file. Open the .txt file in Excel and choose your columns in a sensible way.
Now open ADI and choose for the create journals sheet. Unprotect the sheet and add as many rows as are necessary. Copy each segment of the account in the right columns. Create a formula which places the amount in the right column, debit or credit.
If the amount on the account is negative book the same amount now on the debit site, and multiply the amount with -1. The amount should be positive in ADI now. The possitive amounts must be placed on the credit site (do not mulitply this with -1).
Add one more row and balance this journal. To balance the journal use a account that has another account type then Expense or Revenue.
Upload the journal.
Go back to Oracle EBS and post the journal in GL. Now rerun the trial balance – detail report. If all went right now all your accounts with account type Expense or Revenue must be 0. If an account is zero it won’t be displayed in this report.
Inquire your currenct retained earnings account to make sure that your period end balance is 0.
Now change the retained earnings account in your SOB.
Now you have to reverse the journal you imported via ADI. So reverse the journal and post is. Close the period (and also the year) and open the next period (and year). Now the retained earnings will be displayed on the new retained earnings account. The old retained earnings account will have a value of 0.
In the last period of the year, the old retained earnings account has for period ending a value of zero, while period start has any value other 0 (unless you have no retained earnings at all, which I don’t hope for you). For this period make a manually transaction from the new retained earnings account, to the old retained earnings account. Now the trial balance makes much more sense.
