Export Journal Entries to Your Accounting System

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Export your journal entries to your accounting system.
  • Customize your reports for export.

Moving From System to System

Our (fictional) nonprofit, No More Homelessness (NMH), has been using Accounting Subledger for one entire accounting period, and it’s time for the first big export.

Sam, the Finance Director, is excited. She’s followed along with how the data has been created in Salesforce and—with some help and training from her consulting partner—it’s time to take that information off to its final home in the accounting system of record.

Note

Note

Our friends at NMH decided earlier to do all of their exports of Accounting Subledger data manually. If you’re interested in an integration between your accounting system and Salesforce, talk with your Salesforce admin and check out the documentation linked in Resources below.

Because Sam uses a fairly common accounting system, there’s an Accounting Subledger template report already set up for her in Salesforce. (Check the links in the Resources section at the end of this unit for a list of available templates to see if your organization’s accounting system is supported.)

Let’s get down to exporting.

Sam, smiling and waving, sits at her computer to get ready to export.

Understanding Export Templates

If your accounting system has a template already set up in Accounting Subledger, you can start by entering the name of that template in the Global Search bar and clicking to open it. To show you the general idea, we’ll start here by searching for and using the Accounting Subledger Common Template, which supports commonly used ledger entry fields but isn’t designed for a particular accounting system.

By default, the report includes these fields that you can map to your accounting system:

  • Transaction Date
  • Opportunity Name
  • GL Code
  • Debit Amount
  • Credit Amount
  • Accounting Period
  • Fulfills a Pledge?

The Accounting Subledger Common Template report

To export the report:

  1. Select Export from the dropdown menu.

    The drop down menu with Export highlighted

  2. Select Details Only, then set the Format to Comma Delimited .csv. (Note: Details Only is the recommended export view for uploading to other systems.)

    The Export options interface with Details Only and Comma Delimited .csv selected

  3. Click Export.

And there you go, a handy .csv file that can be imported to your accounting system. You may want to open it in your favorite spreadsheet editor for review and updating first. 

The export file open in a spreadsheet editor

If you find yourself making a lot of changes or reordering rows, you can always change the report you export from Salesforce.

Customize a Report for Export

Salesforce is a flexible platform that can be customized to meet your needs, and these reports are no different. If your accounting software isn’t supported with an out-of-the-box template or if you’d just like to change the order of columns or add additional information, you can create custom reports or save a copy of an existing report and modify it to your needs.

Let’s do just that with the Accounting Subledger Common Template.

  1. Enter Accounting Subledger Common Template in Global Search and click on the report to open it.
  2. In the upper right corner, click the down arrow and then Save As to save a copy with a new report name.

    Save As highlighted in the drop-down menu.

  3. Once you’ve saved a new copy, you can click Edit in the upper right corner.
  4. In the Columns area, click into the Add column… search bar then find and select Check/Reference Number, Ledger Entry: ID, and Ledger Entry: Owner Name.
  5. Click Refresh to view the changes in report view, then click Save & Run to view the full report.

    The customized template with columns added

If this meets your needs, you can export it just like the standard template. (And if you’d like to learn more about customizing reports in Salesforce, be sure to complete the Reports & Dashboards for Lightning Experience module linked in Resources below.)

Note

Note

However you configure your report, here’s a pro tip for manual exporters: Subscribe to your report to have it sent to your email address on a regular basis. Even if you don’t use the report sent to you for import into the accounting system, it’s good to check in on the data regularly.

Better Results Through Faster Accounting

At NMH, Sam completed her export, imported it into her accounting system, and was able to reconcile and close the books in record time. She had new insight into the fundraising team’s results, and she didn’t have to ask them questions while they were juggling donor meetings and campaign planning. 

Accounting Subledger freed up time for everyone to do their best work. That makes Sam and Aniyah, the Development Director, happy. And that’s not to mention how pleased their Executive Director and board are to have financial results sooner, allowing them to better forecast, plan, and respond to changes in program demand and world events.

More time and more trust: That’s what automatically translating fundraising data into accounting data through Accounting Subledger is able to provide.

At NMH, Sam, holding a binder labeled “Financial Statements,” and Aniyah give each other a jumping high five in the NMH board room.

Resources