Departments and accounts can and do share the same FUNDs, AREAs, or ORGs, but never the same FUND, AREA, ORG combination. Used to define general classes of expenses, such as Personnel, Equipment, Travel, and Supplies. Departments use appropriation units to partition the monies in an account among these categories. Within each AU are Object Codes. An object code describes the specific type of expense within an appropriation unit.
Object codes have four digits, usually numeric.
There are some departments which generate revenue which means they receive monies for services they provide or goods they sell. Once budgets are established within accounts, departments can use those monies to buy or purchase needed items. Each budgeting, purchasing, or accounting transaction enters the system as a document. Centralized information is stored in tables. CUFS uses the data in the table when processing documents, validating codes, looking up missing data, and producing reports.