 location from headquarters to remote sales offices or stand-alone call centers. What you will see is someone, somewhere in the organization, appointed to be responsible for all expenses incurred during the course of operations at each and every location. Another connection between the system and the organization is in the revenue category and the sales department. Stop and think about it: Is your organization using a website to attract prospective custom- ers and then enabling them to place orders? Where's the sales repre- sentative in this picture? The revenue category in the accounting PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS system must be capturing the revenue numbers somehow, some- where. What does it take to get the expense category to capture the cost of the Internet access facility? Depending on the size and number of accounts, larger organizations will have additional subaccounts in a hierarchy of sorts that tends to mirror organizational reporting structure and management chain. For example, revenues would look a lot like the sales and marketing organization. Certain parts of the asset accounts would match pro- duction or manufacturing organizations where inventory or facilities churn and change on a daily basis as products shipped undergo the billing process. In communications service provider organizations, the equivalent to production is network operations where facilities are used to support the organization's service delivery. The Account Numbering System The structure of the monthly reporting system is built around unique identifiers for the account and subaccounts in the accounting system's chart of accounts. At the small end of the scale is the entity that keeps track of its accounting affairs in each of the unique cat- egories: assets, liabilities, equity, revenues, and expenses. At the other end of the spectrum is the large entity with many departments and operational functions located in many locations. At the smaller end of the spectrum are organizations that can ea