A number of accounts for various research activities or a number of accounts for different funding for the same research activity. What is important is that each account must be unique in that it covers only one function or activity, has only one person responsible for it, and gets its funding from primarily one source. All the accounts within the FAS are contained in either the General Ledger or a Subsidiary Ledger. The accounts used by most departments will be part of a subsidiary ledger. One exception is trust funds which are often contained only in the general ledger.
Subsidiary ledgers contain the revenue and expenditure accounts.
The basic dollar data shown in these accounts are budgets, revenues, expenditures, encumbrances and budget balance available. Some general ledger accounts will be used to record specific fund additions and fund deductions as account activity occurs. Others, with related subsidiary ledger accounts, will carry summaries of the budgets, revenues and expenditures that are in the subsidiary ledger. Relationship of Ledgers - The subsidiary and general ledger accounts have a predefined relationship designed into the system. In some cases there are many subsidiary ledger accounts reporting to one general ledger account.