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The Business Rules form links commercial operations accounting activities to specific General Ledger account codes that are defined in your Chart of Accounts. In short, Business Rules are the link between the Operations P&L and the Financials P&L. Each Business Rule contains an operations Source, an operations detail Code, and a generic Description for each Source/Code activity.

Business Rules shorthand follow the convention, SOURCE:CODE. For example, a Freight Invoice, Freight Line Item would be written FINV:CFRTR.

This article includes the following information about Business Rules:

Business Rules Guidelines

To get the most out of the Business Rules, follow these guidelines:

• Set them up the same as your company's Chart of Accounts, with the help of a Veson Nautical consultant.
• Try your best to match Business Rules Descriptions with your Chart of Accounts Account Description.
• If you do not configure 100% of your Business Rules from the beginning, you can always add any that you may have missed.
• Once you have configured a specific Business Rule, do not change it without consulting your Accounting department as well as Veson Nautical Support.

How Do Business Rules Work?

IMOS applies a single Business Rule at the line-item level of a transaction (i.e. AR Invoice, AP Invoice, or Journal), and uses the rule logic to automate the account posting process.

1. A user posts an invoice from one of the many invoice lists (e.g., Payables Summary, Receivables Summary, Post Invoices, and Transaction Summary).
2. IMOS references the Source of the transaction that the user is posting.
3. IMOS references the individual transaction line item Bill Code.
4. IMOS references the Business Rules form to locate the row with the same Source and Code from steps 2 and 3.
5. IMOS populates the transaction line item's empty Ledger Account with the same Ledger Account from the referenced Business Rules row.

After picking the ledger account for the line item, IMOS will populate the corresponding General Ledger (Chart of Accounts) account Code.

Setting Up Business Rules

In the Financials module center , under Setup, click Business Rules.

For each activity, enter the appropriate information:

Example Scenarios

Posting a Freight Invoice with Two Line Items

In the following example, an end user will post a Freight Invoice with two line items: Freight and Address Commission.

For reference, here are the Business Rules:

... and here is the transaction before posting:

Note: Because the Business Rules are complete, IMOS has already performed the logical steps necessary to select the Ledger Account Codes.

When the transaction is posted, IMOS references the Source, which is FINV:

IMOS then references the individual line item Codes within the transaction; these can be seen from the Operations tab of the Transaction Data Entry:

IMOS references the Business Rules form and performs a look up for the two Business Rules, which are FINV:CFRTR and FINV:CFACM:

Vendor-Specific Accounting

Problem: Some companies may account for transactions with certain IMOS counterparties differently than how they account for the those same transaction types with the majority of their counterparties. A common example of this is handling Freight with an internal company via a different ledger account, or handling all AP through vendor-specific accounts.

Solution: You can create two Business Rule entries for the same bill source and bill code, but also include a Vendor value. With this rule configured, all transactions against the vendor will follow the vendor-specific Business Rule entry, while all other transactions of that same rule will follow the general rule.

The following screenshot shows two Freight Business Rules (FINV:CFRTR). One is for an internal counterparty, while the other is for all other counterparties:

Company-Specific Accounting

Problem: Some companies may account for transactions differently, which means they require a unique setup of financial rules and accounts.

Solution: You can create a different set of Business Rules per Company, which will override the general Business Rules' settings if a specific company runs a voyage.

Deleting Company-Specific Business Rules

Company-specific Business Rules can be deleted by doing either of the following:

• Right-click each Business Rule line and then click Delete.

• Override the Business Rules with a company that has no Business Rules set up.

  1. Once Copy to Company is clicked, IMOS will detect that the current Company does not have any Business Rules.
  2. Click No to decline the creation of Business Rules based on the existing ones.
  3. Confirm this action to replace the Business Rule settings.

Country-Specific Accounting

Problem: Certain business scenarios require reporting on income or expense earned in a certain country for tax or customs purposes.

Solution: You can configure this in Business Rules by setting the Country field. When set, any transaction line item will follow a country-specific Business Rule if its Vendor's Address Book–entry Country is located in the specified country.

The below Business Rules are set to differentiate Port Expenses in Australia from Port Expenses in all other countries: