I have noticed that special accounts cannot be added in Group “Profit and Loss Statement”.
I believe that it would be beneficial to have control accounts to manage special cases in profit and loss statement (such as specific expenses, specific categories of revenues, etc.).
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Control accounts are used to group entities (objects) such as: Customers, Supplier, Inventory Items, Fixed Assets, etc.
There are no such entities for Profit and Loss.
What more would these new control accounts do more than the existing collapsible groups?
There are a lot of examples tailored to the needs of each entity.
On my part, I have businesses with annual budget (approved by the board before the year starts) and through profit and loss statement monitor budget execution such as available funds, committed funds, lapsed credits, etc.
Futhermore, through revenues (within the same statement) specific groups like fees, sponsorship, grants could be depicted.
Following the above, I believe that extending the current capability of special accounts would be very beneficial (I think that it is technically feasible given that special accounts can already be created under accounts of balance sheet).
Sure, special accounts do exist, but each special account is a permanent account while profit and loss accounts are all temporary accounts.
Since your answer doesn’t fully address question about the purpose of control accounts in P&L, I’ll have to assume that your purpose is to reduce mistakes during manual entry.
Manager has a great tool to reduce entry mistakes and that is Non-inventory Items. You can structure your P&L using as many levels of groups and then link each account to one or more items.
Non-inventory Items can also classify the same item differently when bought or sold.
Thank you for your response.
Unfortunately, non-inventory items do not meet these requirements (as described above).
Profit and loss accounts may be temporary, but when they used year by year, they are driven to be treated like permanent accounts.
Let’s clarify more my suggestion:
The purpose of control accounts in P&L is to monitor specific groups (“entities” as you defined them) of revenues (as I said before like fees, sponsorship) and expenses (categorising groups of e.g. annual budget like available and committed appropriations, etc.) through journal entries. Apart from the entries that may result in balance sheet accounts, adjusting journal entries are used to present, for example, budget execution within P&L statement.
I am little bit disappointed that existing tools (like special control accounts) cannot be extended easily providing flexibility. Of course, I may understand the reasons behind that, but I am dissapointed…
@evans, you gave some confusing descriptions.
All of these describe assets or liabilities, which would not appear on the profit and loss statement, no matter how things are organized.
These are just categories of income or expenses. They are handled by posting transactions to relevant income or expense accounts, which can be grouped however you like. They can also be collapsed, as @Ealfardan mentioned.
Special accounts, on the other hand, are actually subsidiary ledgers on the balance sheet. So, just as a bank account is a subsidiary ledger of Cash & cash equivalents and a customer is a subsidiary ledger of Accounts receivable, a special account can be a subsidiary ledger of some other control account. See https://www.manager.io/guides/10555.
You are mistaken. What you describe is entirely different from a conceptual point of view. But your goals are already achievable using features of the chart of accounts. See https://www.manager.io/guides/9181.
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That’s not what I meant by entities. The entities are Customers, Suppliers, Employees, etc.
Also, for the grouping part, why not just use groups.
Please refer to the guide provided by @Tut:
This will help you group your P&L to your liking.
This description sounds like these businesses are budgeting for separate projects and activities. Have you tried using the Project functionality or the Divisions fuctionality in Manager.io?
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