Possible to add a feature for linking clients with expenditure?

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I have several divisions of income such as Broadband Services, Backup services, Website Services etc.

I want to allocate income to the sales income account and use tracking codes to separate the income into broadband, backup, website etc.

I will have expense accounts such as outsource work, utilities, software purchases etc and I will use the same tracking codes to allocate them to broadband, website etc.

However I have no way to link a purchase or expense to a specific client. For example I might buy 1TB of backup storage for one client. This will go into the Utilities expense account and be allocated to the Backup Tracking code.

I have looked at disbursements, but the way disbursements works does not work in the way that I want it to with regards to the way the details are invoiced as I don’t want to pass the expense on - I want to make a profit on the sale and I don’t want to show my cost price and my commission on the sales invoice. Also I am not able to allocate disbursements to expense accounts (to categorise the expenses) that I want (even though they are not company expenses) and also some things I buy are never invoiced to the client directly as a product. For example my clients buy a backup service, but they don’t pay for the backup software as the cost of the software is incorporated into the backup service price. I also frequently buy multiple items for different clients in one purchase invoice. Thus disbursements doesn’t work for at this point in time.

I could create a broadband income and broadband expenses account and create tracking codes for each client, but this means that the outsourced work expenses and utilities expenses are all lumped up in the broadband expenses account and this approach will not work for the sales division as I want the inventory reporting information and I want to break the sales up into computer sales, software sales, whiteboard sales etc so I need the tracking codes for computer sales, software sales etc.

So I am thinking a better solution for both myself and perhaps for other people would be to have an option where you can allocate to whatever account you want, add a tracking code which would track whatever you want such as project/income for division etc and in addition have an option to specify which client an expense is applicable to.

The end result that I want to accomplish is to ascertain how much net profit I have made per client and I cannot do that unless I can specify which client an expense has been incurred for.

I hope that I have made sense here. Thank you

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I am hoping for this kind of possibility to!

Something like a: work in progress/project/job tab where we can have a total overview of quote’s,costs, income a agenda and perhaps even the possibibilty to ad a file.

It would be perfect if we could select al kinds of costs (like billable time and dissbursements) to make a invoice so there is no need to search and type every single item again.
For us its for contracting projects but I believe a lot of us are hoping for this kind of possibility with each of us there own kind of use.

When there is a option for multiple kind of trackingcodes and this kind of tab it would be totally awesome!

3

I generally consider tracking codes ‘PROJECTS’ and likewise consider project is basically customer specific.

I would suggest:

Adding a few more revenue accounts - broadbank, backup,website revenue etc.
So book your revenue to the ‘Account’ that indicates the natrure of the revenue recording the ‘Project’ to which it relates by tracking code. The project might represent "Broadband for Customer xyz’.
Book your expenses to the account that represents the nature of the expense and the ‘Project’ to which it relates since those expenses are non-recoverable, i.e. not directly billable.
Heck if you did have some directly billable time or expenses you could also use disbursements and billable time in addition for the same project.

Just a thought. Anyway that is kind of how I use it for project tracking. On my first read that is my thought. If you added a few separate revenue accounts you may be closer than you think.

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That kind of solution is not what I am looking for. I know how to work with extra accounts, disbursements, billable time and tracking codes. This is more than a lot of accounting software programs offer that(and otherwise its just perfect) is why we chose manager. :+1:

I just think it’s unfair that every accounting program is giving big time solutions for inventory and manufacturing needs but not one (I have found) is giving good solutions for projects / clients expenditure.

I would like to have a true overview of every project aspect without having to print my billable time and disbursements to 1 invoice. Then delete the invoice because I just wanted to have an overview of al the costs.
Then when I actually made the invoice I have to select every bill and group it to the correct account because I just did not want it to go to disbursements.

I would love to see real time costs (every item) and income from 1 project and have the correct materials on our invoice without the need of excel.

I know I’m not the only one who has asked about it so I believe more company’s would benefit.

@lubos I really hope :pray: you will consider a new kind of feature like this.

5

Tracking codes can be used for the purpose of tracking profitability by job but I do agree maybe tracking codes will be in future reserved for long term concepts such as divisions and maybe something new (projects?) will be introduced for short-term trackability.

This way you could possibly set the budget, deadline or how much you have quoted client for the project. Or even setup to-do list and track the progress. Then you would see how you are going per each project.

The reason why inventory and manufacturing is usually implemented in accounting packages first it’s because it’s well understood concept. Also it’s essential for financial reporting. Project tracking has no impact on financial statements, it’s more of an internal thing.

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@lubos You would be my hero!

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I think that there are two requirements being listed here. What ajmk1 is actually looking for is multiple tracking codes where I imagine a main tracking code will be to cover the project and sub tracking codes will be to cover what expense/income is being tracked for financial reporting. At least ways, thats what I am understanding.

What I want is actually to track divisions such as sales, IT support - so I can see what divisions bring in the money and what my costs are for each division. With the existing setup, I can do this. However I have no way of seeing what my net profit is over a year per client. I am not really looking for the net profit per project which is what ajmk1 is looking for, but rather the net profit per client per year. What I need is an option to select tracking code Broadband and select the client from the drop down. Then have a report option which will allow me to see all expenditure for a particular client.

Maybe, what we need is a master tracking code which could be used for the division or for the project. Then sub tracking codes to track the project (if using divisions) or to track income/expenses based on whatever criteria you want and in addition have the ability to select a client for each line of income/expense. Then obviously in the reporting section have the ability to filter expenses based on the drop down selection of client.

I am not sure how the work in progress/project tab would work as I don’t have projects that would need that kind of functionality. But I sort of follow where ajmk1 is coming from.

But in short, I think we have two separate requrests here. One is to track overall annual income/expenditure per client (my request) and the second request is to track the overall project by using multiple tracking codes.

I think some people are confusing my request with project management.

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I’m truly sorry for hijacking your topic :blush:

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Oh its alright. Tracking codes is a very confusing area and everyone’s business is different so people are viewing tracking codes how they need it and its a difficult area to explain what you want for your particular business.

I also think that multiple tracking codes as you suggested would be a good idea.

I am busy looking into using disbursements for my Installations and Website services as I have realised that my costs for outsourcing some of the work will be different for each project therefore purchase and sales invoice items is not really practical. I have discovered that I can use disbursements for the installation subcontracting service and website graphics design subcontracting service because I can change the price on the clients sales invoice to reflect what I actually want the client to pay as opposed to what I paid. And the expenditure is linked to the client! However I still cannot track the net profit per client as there is no reporting capability for that.

But you might want to look at disbursements for your projects as you can create a new invoice and select the client and select all the disbursements for that client from the list. The only problem is that you have to change your purchase price to your markup price. There are also a couple of problems with disbursements in that it doesn’t work in sales quotes nor for sales or purchaser orders.

10

I already use disbursements for my projects / contracts and tracking codes and do change the price.
There would be a third problem and that is that disbursements do not show on the P&L report. That way you still can not see the profit or loss per account / customer. However When I have invoiced one project I would still like to know the costs and income for this. Because Disbursements does not show in the p&l report there is not an accurate overview.

When I have 1 contract with several projects I would like to give this 1 invoice. Like a home remodeling I would like to see the costs for the kitchen and for the bathroom separately.

The best option for this I think (to keep it simple) is to give every cost and income item a possibility to give it a contract/project number just like a tracking code in combination with the disbursements possibility. The contract/project is then already signed to a customer. Then you can break down all costs and income for the correct customer and project. Tracking codes can then be used for separate divisions and other things.

This way you can have a total overview of every contract/project per customer and it’s profit.

It would be great when I create an invoice I can select items in the same way the disbursements tab offers. So there won’t be costs that needs to be specified again or could be forgotten to invoice. Disbursements and billable time is actually perfect except I would like it to see per customer / project without having to make a actual invoice.

11

I think that our problems are more similar than I realised. I am still very new to Manager, and I am finding it difficult to know when to use Tracking codes and deciding whether I should use Disbursements, inventory on hand etc.

Yes I discovered that Disbursement income shows on P&L, whereas Disbursements Recoverable shows on the Balance Sheet and you cannot see profit/loss per project or client!

I think that I now understand what you want to do and actually it something that I want as well. I was focused on seeing the net profit per client over a year, but that in reality is built on being able to determine the expenditure per project and per client. What you want is like for my business. I want to link a network installation project to a client (which I can do with Disbursements) - and then I want to specify that it is for the division installations which is what you want to do with your kitchens/bathrooms example and then you want to specify that this specific kitchen/network install for this client A is for this specific project implemented on date xyz. And actually you are rigtht. I would want to be able to see how much profit I make for that particular network install, home renovation project.

I think that if Lubos could create multiple tracking codes, then we could create a master tracking code for the Project that the client wants eg Network Install/House Rebuild Project 001 and then we could allocate items in this project to the Installations Division or the Kitchen/Bedroom Division. In my example, I would still need to select clients (if not using disbursements) as I cannot allocate inventory sales to a specific client nor can I allocate a purchase invoice item to a client. I would need to use purchase invoice items and sales invoice items as a few things are not directly invoiceable for eg I would buy 1 TB of data backup storage from my online storage people. But I would sell five blocks of 200 GB storage space to five different clients.

By implementing multiple tracking codes (and I think Lubos understood) we have a project tracking code and a divisions tracking code. And of course we need to select clients for each expense if not using disbursements.

However as you pointed out, even when using disbursements, we still cannot see how much profit we are making per project or per client because disbursements is in P&L and Balance Sheet and the Balance Sheet does not show the Disbursements Tracking Codes! And despite the link between clients and Disbursement expenses, there is no reporting functionality to tot up all the income and expense per client or per project.

So yes I think that the two reqeusts are related to one another as working out the client net profit over a year would be built on the functionality of being able to determine the profit per project as well as the profit for other areas.

I think we need to have a divisions tracking code and a project tracking code as Lubos suggested because one of the problems is that we will end up having hundreds of codes for hundreds of projects but we only want to view a small number of divisions. Maybe the project tracking code can work like an invoice number - in that it automatically increments for a new project tracking code?

Holy Crap this is complicated!