The General Ledger Accounting System has two types of centers, a low–level center and a summary center.

Low Level Centers

A low level center is used to accumulate financial data for the University by individual departments or purpose within
specific areas. A low–level center number consists of ten digits, all numeric. The four fields and positions are as follows:

Type of Fund

The fund types are predefined for position one as follows:

Explanation of Fund Types

Operating (Unrestricted) current funds include all resources received for which no stipulation was made by a donor or other external agency as to the purpose for which the funds should be expended. Current operating funds are intended for general operating purposes (Centers that begin with 1, 2 (Hospital), and 3 (Self-Balancing and Vanderbilt Medical Group [VMG] mainly).

Designated (Restricted) current funds are those resources available for financing operations but limited by the donor or other external agencies to specific users, for example, a research project or departmental chair (Centers that begin with 4).

Loan funds are used to account for resources available for loans to students. (Centers that begin with 5).

Endowment funds are not expendable but are invested or are available for investment for the purpose of producing revenue (Centers that begin with 6).

Life Income funds are composed of funds acquired by an institution on the condition that it pays stipulated amounts periodically or for a lifetime to the donor or other designated person (Centers that begin with 7).

Plant funds are used for four purposes: (1) acquisition of long-lived assets, (2) renewal and replacement of institutional properties, (3) debt service charges and retirement of indebtedness on institutional plant, and (4) the cost of long lived assets (Centers that begin with 8).

Agency funds are held by the institution which acts as a custodian or fiscal agent for students, faculty, staff members, or organizations (Centers that begin with 9).

Summary Centers

A summary center is used to accumulate information of low-level centers at various levels within the system for reporting purposes. Each summary center is identified with a six position alphanumeric name. The three most common types of summary centers are for departments, divisions, and type of fund. Divisional summary centers for the unrestricted fund are as follows: