Before implementing COA masks and shared sets, you must first determine who will be responsible for maintaining both the COA element shared sets and COA mask shared sets. You must also consider whether the COA shared sets and COA mask shared sets will be administered locally or centrally, or a combination of both.

Both of these considerations greatly influence the setup of the COA masks and their shared sets, as described in the following scenarios.

In this scenario, the GL shared set, sub-account shared set, and sub-account mask shared sets are administered centrally in the organization’s head office by corporate finance and accounting personnel. The data is then shared across all domains.

In this scenario, the GL account, sub-account, and sub-account mask shared sets are maintained locally by each site’s finance and accounting personnel. An organization may want to separate shared sets due to varying levels of complexity within the COA and within the COA masks for each domain.

In scenario 3, the GL shared sets are not shared across domains and are maintained locally by each site’s finance and accounting personnel. The sub-account and sub-account mask shared sets are shared across domains, and are maintained by one person centrally in the corporate head office.