Accrual calculations
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How to automate accrual calculations
Manually calculating and allocating accruals across GL accounts is time-consuming, especially when handling multiple carriers, suppliers, or cost centers. Teams often pull raw shipment cost data from various sources, but standardizing these numbers and formatting them correctly for ERP upload requires tedious spreadsheet work. Without automation, there’s a risk of errors in journal entry uploads, leading to misallocated costs and reconciliation headaches (which are incredibly time-consuming to audit after the fact).
With Parabola, you can automatically sum shipment costs by carrier, ensuring accurate accrual allocation per GL account. Use filtering to separate shipments by carrier, then apply an Add text column step to assign the correct GL account number and name. Finally, stack the records into a structured format, ready for ERP upload. This approach eliminates manual formatting, reduces errors, and ensures financial records stay accurate and audit-ready.
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An accrual calculation determines the total cost incurred within a specific period, even if the expense has not yet been paid. This process ensures accurate financial reporting by recording expenses in the correct accounting period rather than when cash transactions occur.
- Pull datasets that will help identify expenses that were accrued but not invoiced for using steps like Pull from CSV file and Pull from Netsuite.
- Clean the dataset and remove unnecessary column values using steps like Edit columns and Filter rows.
- Compare datasets to identify expenses that were incurred but not invoiced for using steps like Combine tables (like a VLOOKUP) and Compare tables.
- Apply math calculations and aggregate data using steps like Add math column and Sum by group to calculate total accrued expenses.
- Assign values to GL accounts using steps like Add text column and Add if/else column.
- Prepare your data to be uploaded back into your ERP or any other system using steps like Format numbers and Edit columns.
- Export the final dataset using steps like Generate CSV file, Send to Google Sheets, or Email a file attachment.
- Standardize data early using an Edit columns or Standardize with AI step to avoid discrepancies in naming conventions.
- Use validation steps like Remove duplicates and Find overlap to check for duplicate or missing accrual records.
- Automate journal entry formatting by dynamically assigning GL accounts with an Add if/else column step.
- Build a historical accrual tracking table in Parabola to analyze trends and refine calculations over time.
- To start building your own accrual calculation Flow, use the Template above and check out Parabola University.
