Accounts

Accounts are used to organize financial data throughout the system. Line items are individual pieces of data that provide details about a financial transaction. A line item tells what kind of payment it is, when it was made, and provides additional information that corresponds to the university ERP system. Each line item can be a different type within the account. Examples of line items in a revenue account are sales royalties, equity, milestones, etc. Accounts of similar types can be added together to form aggregate numbers across multiple areas of the system.

  • Revenue – Balances to the GL. This contains all revenue (royalty) dollars that are linked to an agreement. Revenue payments that come from both revenue/compliance invoices and sales royalties, etc. that have no invoices go into this account. If the deposit is related to an invoice, the invoice date on the line item will be the date the invoice was sent out of the system. If the money received was not an invoice (often a sales royalty), the date in the invoice date field should be the same as the journal date (the date the money was posted to the GL or the period). If an allocation schedule is created in the agreement, Innovate will split the revenue received per the schedule. If there is no allocation schedule, the payments will only be linked to the agreement unless the user manually indicates how the revenue should be allocated.
  • Reimbursement – Balances to the GL. Contains all reimbursement deposits that have been received against the related agreement. Payments posted in a reimbursement account may or may not have an associated invoice. If the payment from the licensee is related to an invoice, the invoice date on the line item will be the date the invoice was sent out of the system. If the money received is not related to an invoice, the date in the invoice date field should be the same as the journal date (the date the money was posted to the GL or the period). For every reimbursement that exists in Innovate, there should be one or more expense line items that contain the same invoice number.
  • Distributions (Inventor, College,Lab, etc.) – Balances to the GL. The line items in each account represents payments that were made. The invoice date on these items should be the same as the journal date of the revenue that is being distributed for consistency. The distribution account types are set up based on the individual needs of the organization. Typically, the accounts in this category are College, Department, Inventors, Cost Recovery, Other Internal (Centers, Divisions, Labs, Funds, etc.), Other External (co-owners).
  • Cost Recovery Distribution -At times, revenue received is used to pay expenses prior to distribution. From the distributions function, a value is provided to the user that is the variance for the sum of expenses compared to the sum of reimbursements for the technology and the patents linked to the technology.
  • Payments – Credits to other parties. The payment accounts should have a line item that offsets the credits in the payment accounts. While the payments can be searched and viewed by external parties, they are only used for informational purposes and are not used to reconcile the general ledger.
  • Expense – Balances to the GL. Used for recording expenses that are owed to law firms and other groups and are related to technologies and/or patents.
  • Expense – 3rd Party – Balances to the GL. This account is used for recording payments made to other organizations for reimbursement of their patent expenses. Therefore, this account type should only appear on an agreement with a type that is Inter-Institutional – Non-Lead. Expenses within accounts of this type are not billable to other IIA’s but are billable to licensees.

Account Detail Page

  • Account #
  • Account Code – Can be customized by organization
  • Account External Code – Links to an account that is external to the system. In the case of expenses, this may be the matter number referenced by the law firm
  • Type – Debit or credit that typically corresponds to an account in the general ledger
  • Status
  • Total Amount – Sum of all line items in this account
  • Total Journaled
  • Description
  • Internal ID – Unique identifier for the account, can also be seen in the URL