Chart of Accounts

Banner System – Chart of Account Structure

What's A FOAPAL?

A FOAPAL is an acronym for the accounting coding for entry into Banner. This is also referred to as the budget number. The budget number consists of five components: Fund, Organization, Account, Program, and Activity (The L in FOAPAL stands for Location. This coding is not used at the College).

Description of FOAPAL pieces

1. Fund – A five-character code that identifies a self balancing set of accounts and identifies ownership and restriction. This code is required input in Banner for all accounting transactions. 10000 is the code for the general unrestricted fund.

2. Organization – A four-character code that identifies a unit of budgetary responsibility and/or department. This code is a required input in Banner for revenue and expense transactions.

3. Account – A four-character code that identifies objects, such as the general ledger (assets, liabilities and fund balances) and the operating ledger (income and expense) transactions. This code is required input in Banner for all accounting transactions. Revenues have an account sequence 5XXX. Payroll and fringe benefit expenses have an account sequence 6XXX. Other expenses have an account sequence of 7XXX. (See Commonly Used Accounts)

4. Program – A three-digit code that identifies a function and enables the college to establish a method of classifying transactions across organizations. This code is a required input in Banner for revenue and expense transactions. Each organization has a default program code associated with it.

5. Activity – An optional six-character code that can be used to further define an expenditure or source of revenue. This code must be set up in Banner by the Budget Office prior to use. As this is an optional code, transactions with an invalid activity code will be posted without it.

Please refer to the Budget Office website for detail budget viewing and Banner instructions.