Departments (Departmental Accounting)
Table of Contents
Background
The Departmental Accounting feature gives you the ability to track financial profitability within your business by department(s).
You can assign a single department or multiple departments per line on many types of transactions.
A preference can be selected in System Preferences enabling you to turn on the feature. Once the feature is activated, one or more Departments can be allocated to the following transaction types:
- Record Journal Entries
- Spend Money
- Receive Money
- Enter Sales
- Receive Retainer
- Spend Retainer
- Enter Purchases
- Enter Activity Slips
- Enter Paychecks
- Enter Time-sheets
- Bank Deposits
- Inventory Adjustments
You can also assign a default department to cards in the card details section. This will give you the ability to keep separate lists of cards by departments while keeping all cards part of the same larger list.
Enable Departments
Once Departments are enabled you will see the option to select a department on each of the above transaction types (much like jobs). To enable departments feature:
- Go to the Setup menu and choose Preferences.
- Click the System tab.
- Select I Use Departments; if Departments Are Not Assigned to All P&L Accounts Don’t Warn/Warn [System-Wide].
Note: Turning off department tracking deletes all departments and all related information. If you choose to turn off department tracking, any departments you have created and their transaction history will be deleted from your company file. You should make a backup of your company file before you take this step so that you can access this information if required.
Creating a Department
To create a department:
- Go to the Lists menu and choose Departments. The Department List window appears.
- Click New. The Department Information window appears.
- In the Department ID field, enter up to a 5 alpha-numeric characters used to identify the department then press TAB.
- In the Department Name field, enter the name of the department.
- If you want to enter a description of the department or notes related to the department you can enter up to 1000 characters in the Description field.
- Click OK.
Assigning a Department to a Card
To assign a department to a card:
- Go to the Card File command center and select Card List. The Card List window appears.
- Select a card and click Edit. The Card Information window appears.
- Click the Card Details tab.
- Enter the Department ID in the Department field then TAB.
- Click OK.
Department Reports
To find department based reports:
- Go to you top menu bar and select Reports > Index to Reports.
- Choose the Accounts tab at the top.
- Scroll down to the Departments reports.