@samyacquah, what’s your goal? If you want to see income by church, you can create separate income account for each church.
Will special accounts eventually be able to be used to split say food expense into food categories for home accounting and to split inventory cost into different inventory categories. this way I can keep just food and inventory cost (one item each) on summary page, but still break them up, by drilling down.
@dalacor, I don’t think that’s a good way to go. I mean if the split is so important to you that you want to track it, then create those sub-accounts directly on your chart of accounts and let them show on summary screen or P&L statement.
@lubos I think special accounts solves a number of problems and is actually a very good way to go.
Consider home accounts and food. By using Special Accounts, I can keep only the food expense account on the profit and loss statement (and thus on the summary page). In addition, when budgeting comes in, I can apply budget to food and to various other expenses. This means I have one expense account in profit and loss and one expense account showing in Summary Page and I can allocate one expense account (Food) to my budget. But I would still be able to click on Food and see a breakdown of Food in terms of Meat, Fish, Vegetables etc.
The same concept would apply to inventory cost - I can have one expense account in Summary Page and on profit and loss statement. This is most desirable as there is no value in having Inventory Cost Laptops, Inventory Cost Whiteboards etc on the Profit and Loss Statement. My accountant is not interested in that, and neither do I want my summary page to include an extra dozen items. Thus by using Special Accounts I can keep one expense and one income account on the profit and loss statement, but still be able to drill down and view the various subledgers as far as inventory goes.
I appreciate that special accounts may not have been designed by yourself for this purpose, but I see no reason why it cannot be implemented as it does not change anything as far as the accounts itself goes. All it is changes is the presentation of the data to suit the business owner. In short, by enabling special accounts for accounts in the profit and loss section, you are making the program as universal as possible by enabling people to use the system in the manner that best suits them. It would make the program far more flexible.
If you don’t want to use special accounts to accomplish this (although I think it would be perfect), could you implement some kind of functionality to be able to see just food on the profit and loss statement and perhaps click a plus next to the food and see the list of food categories as a breakdown. All I want is the ability to have one expense account on the summary page and profit and loss and be able to either click on the expense account or click a plus next to the expense account and see a breakdown of that expense account without having to open a report every single time.
I am sure that there are loads of people who want to breakdown an income or expense account on the fly without having to create a report every time. Food and family budgeting is a brilliant example of a user case.
@lubos, If you select an account and leave the description blank, the account name is displayed when you view the transaction. Special accounts however don’t show. I tried this in journal entries, payments, and receipt.
I fixed journal entries too in the latest version (16.9.72). But it will show only special account name for now, not the control account under which special account is reporting under.
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hi @lubos can i use the special accounts as a ledger for the partner current account under the equity section, and then let it automatically add a salary every month to three of the managing partners, which the total will be added the current account but also each one will be added separately in the special account, so it doesn’t show in the statements
If the “partners” are truly partners, you should use a drawings subaccount under Capital Accounts. This will behave as you describe. If the “partners” are employees of the company, you should use payslips.
Did you realise that Capital Accounts has it own maintainable sub-accounts under Settings - Capital Subaccounts. Here you could create a salary sub-account which would be added to the current account and not show on the statements
@Brucanna is right. From a financial standpoint, that’s just a another form of drawing. But it would allow you to distinguish the regular monthly “salary” from less regular distributions of capital (if that is important to you).
And don’t forget, either approach with capital accounts presupposes these are truly partners who jointly own the company, not employees who have ascended to the title of “partner” in a corporate entity.
I have a business with two divisions, such that customers are invoiced one transaction from Div A and second trx from Div B. I do this by Tracking and can report the P&L stmt in two columns by tracking code. That is fine for Accruals but when i also report on a CaSH Basis, the income received is not the actual cash received.
The customer pays one amount and the receipt is assigned to an invoice containing the two Divisions BUT, the monies received dont match the invoice.
Eg invoice Div A. $400
Invoice Div B. $150
for a customer who then pays $550.
In the customer ledger the deposit is split on some ratio set by Manager eg it might put $399.56 in Div A and $150.44 in Div B. So close but incorrect.
Why is it doing that? How can i rely on cash flows which this unaccuracy?
Are you using multiple currencies, @MicheleA? Can you post some screen shots to further illustrate the issue?
Can I suggest to implement feature to mark Special Accounts as inactive to hide the accounts you no longer need? I have loads going on in the list which I need to hide badly. Please clarify if it might be helpful to others as well.
As a work around, put “z” in front of the inactive account name and that will send them to the bottom of the list.
Alternatively, depending on the future need to ever refer back to the data - create a Zzzzz account, reallocate the transactions from the inactive account to it, then the inactive can be deleted.
If the Special Accounts relate to different control accounts, then you can have:
Zzzz Control Acct A
Zzzz Control Acct B
But your suggestion regarding marking them as inactive would be preferable, identical to cash accounts
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Hi Lubos,
Is there any update on the possibility of using Special Accounts under Payslip items yet? This would be extremely useful for me, so here’s hoping.
Thanks very much.
Can you be a bit more specific with you request?
You cannot use a special account in payslip items. For example, I need a control account for recording staff loans. The loans will be paid off or deducted with a monthly payslip (part of deductions for the month).
Currently, this is not possible due to the fact that Special Accounts don’t appear there and there is no Control Account made up of Normal Accounts too.