[16.5.32] Added ability to create custom control accounts for cash accounts

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This release note has been updated by @brucanna to reflect the change in process that was introduced after the original release. This updating includes the deleting of posts not relevant to the changed process.

Cash Accounts

All cash accounts (Petty Cash, Cheque (check), Savings, Transactions, Credit Card, Overdrafts ) are created as sub-accounts under the Cash Accounts tab and their balances are grouped together on the Balance Sheet under a single control account called Cash & cash equivalents.

This release allows those cash accounts to be given their own control accounts so they can be shown as:
A) Liabilities where they normally have negative balances - credit cards
B) Individually where the user doesn’t want to see the cash accounts grouped

A) If some of your cash accounts represent negative cash such as overdrafts or credit cards, then it’s a good idea to create a new control account which allows you to categorize them under Liabilities rather then the default Assets location. To do this for a ‘credit card’ follow this 2 step process

Step1 - Create new control account
Click the Settings tab, click Chart of Accounts and next to Balance Sheet click the ‘New Account’ button.
Enter the required account Name, for the Group field select ‘Liabilities’, tick the Control Account box and select ‘Made up of - Cash Accounts’ and then click ‘Create’

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Step 2 - Assign cash account to the control account
Go to the ‘Cash Accounts’ tab, click Edit next to the ‘credit card’ account and under the ‘Control Account’ field select ‘Credit Card’.

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Now this account will be displayed under Liabilities on the Balance Sheet.

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B) If you have different types of positive bank accounts - cheque (check), savings, transactions - and you wanted to display them individually on the Balance Sheet then you would follow these three steps:

Step 1 - Rename the existing control account.
Click on the Settings tab, click Chart of Accounts and then click Edit next to the Cash & cash equivalents account. Enter a name to suit your main active account and then click Update

Note : All cash accounts will remain grouped under this control account name until you have created and assigned them to a new control account - as per step 2 & 3.

Step 2 - Create new control accounts.
While you are still at Settings - Chart of Accounts, click ‘New Account’ button on the Balance Sheet side. Enter the required account Name, for the Group field select ‘Assets’, tick the Control Account box and select ‘Made up of - Cash Accounts’ and then click ‘Create’

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Step 3 - Assign cash account to the control account
Go to the ‘Cash Accounts’ tab, click Edit next to the ‘Savings’ account and under the ‘Control Account’ field select ‘Savings Accounts’.

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Now thiese account will be displayed individually under Assets on the Balance Sheet.

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Cash accounts can be assigned as a group or individually to a control account - if you three credit cards - these can be grouped within one control account or they can be individually shown on the Balance Sheet by having their own control account.

If you have several cash account control accounts, then these can be grouped under a Balance Sheet heading

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THANK YOU THANK YOU, can’t wait to implement such a major feature improvement.
Once receivables, payables, inventory etc. are done, then Budgeting can be one step closer.
No pressure

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Brilliant @lubos . I look forward to trying this out when you have done the custom control for inventory as that is the one that I need custom control accounts for. Not sure how receivables and payables would benefit from Custom Control Accounts @Brucanna ? I think it might be useful if users say how they intend to use Custom Control Accounts so as to give people ideas as to how to best arrange the Summary Page Screen. I found that seeing what other people had done with sub accounts helped me to setup my summary page so that it works really well for me because I got ideas from other people.

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I was just quoting @lubos “in upcoming days, custom control accounts will be extended to more areas such as receivables, payables, inventory” However, if your business has two or more locations, operations etc., then you could split the Receivables/Payables so each component could monitor their own.

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Besides you can create trade receivables control account and Non-trade receivables control account to distinguish between receivables as a result of normal trading and other receivables

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@lubos there seems to be a technical issue since this update. I am no longer able to ‘spend money’, ‘receive money’ from any of the accounts. even as soon as i enter ‘send money’ or ‘receive money’ from there.

Can you advise if there is a bug?

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@shruti, can you please provide more details, possibly with screen shots? Those functions still work, so can you describe exactly how you are trying to use them?

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@Tut false alarm… it works i restarted my computer. Seems like the issue was my computer

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Oh that makes perfect sense. I understand now. Thanks

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@lubos The cash control accounts are even showing under journals and other places as if they are normal accounts. And even when they show they don’t give you the option to select the particular accounts under the control accounts I want.
I don’t think you wanted that. I know cash accounts don’t appear under journals.

see pictures below

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The picture above testifies to the cash control account showing among all accounts during spend money

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The picture above shows the created cash control account named Cash Teller Accounts, showing undr journal entry

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Very good point, @Abeiku. The current situation does not permit selection of the default Cash & cash equivalents account in a journal entry, but does permit a custom control account for credit cards, as an example, but not the subaccount for the credit card itself.

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I think that Lubos will need to update the list funcationality throughout the entire program because I have the same kind of issue when doing a purchase invoice for example. It will show all my income accounts first, then my cost of sales expenses sub accounts, then my operating expenses sub accounts and then my employee expenditure sub accounts.

I will never need income accounts in a purchase invoice and the problem with showing sub accounts in the order of the expense account sections is that its not in alphabetical order. I think the filtering for the lists needs to be reviewed throughout the program as the program has gone through so many changes over the last couple of years that a lot of things are showing in lists that shouldn’t be.

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This might not necessarily be true. Suppose your supplier adjusted something on a sales invoice to you and your chart of accounts was set up with a refund income account. You might want to post the refund, which appeared on a sales invoice and was therefore being entered as part of purchase invoice, to that income account rather than reversing it out of whatever expense account it formerly went to. You might not do things a certain way, but I’ll bet I could quickly come up with a dozen examples of how others might. And, of course, Manager can’t know that.

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Well what might be better is to put income accounts at the top if you are dealing with sales invoices and put expense accounts at the top if you are dealing with purchase invoices as you are more likely to want an income account in sales invoices and an expense account in purchase invoice. That would be the way that I would do it.

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You could also make a strong case for always seeing accounts in the same order.

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You are right. This was a bug. Fixed in the latest version.

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After the change to Cash & cash equivalents as the default control account for cash accounts, why does Type remain as part of account definition? I cannot find anywhere that Type–referring to cash at bank or cash on hand–shows up any longer. In fact, it could be confused with the Type heading that shows up when drilling down on an account balance, but that encompasses Payment, Receipt, or Transfer.

@lubos, am I correct that the cash account Type distinguishing cash on hand from cash at bank could be removed? Or is there somewhere it is used that I just don’t see with my particular chart of accounts? The one place it might be useful is as a column in the Cash Accounts listing, although additional “types” should probably be included, such as Credit Card. A similar result could be achieved with a custom field, allowing for any number of “types,” including BitCoin, PayPal, etc.

EDIT: I just discovered where the account Type is still used: in the dropdown account selection boxes for Spend/Receive/Transfer Money. But it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose there except to take up more space. It also appears to be the first factor in default sorting of accounts for presentation in the list, despite not being included in the list.

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Good point. Type field will be removed. It hasn’t been done yet because the type field is used to determine whether account supports uncleared deposits / payments or not.

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I did not realize that. Does that fact mean all the “cash–or whatever they end up being called” accounts would include the uncleared payment/deposits capability? Or is there another way to handle that?

If that’s necessary, and you have to keep Type, it should somehow be expanded to allow other kinds of cash/money than just at bank or on hand. But who could predict what might come down the road in the future?

On the other hand, what is wrong with uncleared status for cash on hand accounts. Perhaps someone might use that for audit verification of cashboxes. I’d have to think more about that.

I experimented with a custom dropdown field in which the options were bank account, cash on hand, and credit card. I found the type information was not as useful as a good, descriptive account name and took up unnecessary space.

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There might be simple checkbox which will simply ask whether bank reconciliation should be enabled on the account. This would determine whether uncleared transactions are supported on the account or not. It will be more straightforward than asking for the type of the account.