Hi, I was wondering now that we have the ability to add divisions to balance sheet items (yeah!!), could we please have a division exception report that covers the balance sheet and not just the P&L?
I had always added divisions / tracking codes to all my entries, including balance sheet ones, although we could not identify them easily in the balance sheet, but at one point we were no longer allowed to add divisions / tracking codes to balance sheet items, so I will now have some missing. It would be great if I could easily identify which ones are missing through an exceptions report, the same way as I check for missing ones in the P&L.
The Division Exception Report (formerly the Tracking Exception Report) is based on assignment of transactions to divisions. Divisional assignments for the balance sheet are based on subsidiary ledger definitions (for control accounts) or account definitions (for ordinary accounts). No transactions are involved. So the basic concept would not work.
The fact that you could make selections of tracking codes when balance sheet accounts were selected in previous versions of Manager is irrelevant. Those selections were ignored by the program. What you might have seen in the Tracking Exception Report were postings to P&L accounts that balanced the postings to balance sheet accounts.
Yes, I realise that the tracking exception report only ever showed transactions related to P&L, and the division exception report now does the same thing. However, my original divisional assignments for transactions related to the balance sheet are no longer being ignored and are now showing in the balance sheet report by division.
Whatever way Manager is assigning the divisions for the balance sheet, it would be great to be able to identify which balance sheet transactions have not been assigned to a division. It makes sense to have this ability for both the P&L accounts and the balance sheet accounts, so I hope it will be something Lubos will introduce soon, since it will enable us to make better use of the new functionality allowing divisional assignments in the balance sheet.
Thanks
You are misconstruing what you see. It isn’t the balance sheet assignments being reflected, it is the effect of transaction assignments on assets and liabilities assigned to various divisions. When you buy a fixed asset, for example, the purchase invoice cannot be assigned to a division, but the asset itself can be. If it is, it shows up on that division’s balance sheet. That purchase invoice—because of the account selected—is not a transaction assignable to a division. But a depreciation expense of the asset can be assigned to a division. In that case, there is a transaction that could be included in the exception report.
Each line item within a purchase invoice is assignable to a division, whether you select a balance sheet account or a P&L account. So any items within my purchase invoice that I had assigned to a balance sheet account and a division, now show up in my balance sheet report by division if I set up the report that way.
What I would like is to easily be able to identify which purchase invoice items fell through the cracks during the short period when we were no longer allowed to add divisions to items tagged to balance sheet accounts.
It would be helpful to know the date we lost the ability to add divisions to balance sheet entries, so I could at least narrow it down to a particular period and look through all the transactions in that time, until we hopefully have some sort of exception report that covers the balance sheet.
Thanks
The first mention I can find of tracking codes evolving into divisional accounting was on January 4, 2021. Actual changes were announced April 17.
It is difficult to tell from the forum history when the ability to select tracking codes on balance sheet line items was removed. Responses to questions before April 17 emphasized that tracking codes applied only to P&L accounts. They didn’t mention that you could select tracking codes but that the program would ignore them. And users were not saying explicitly that could no longer do something they had done before. The first actual complaint about removal I found was in May. But that could be a reflection of the fact that there was no designed-in use for tracking codes on balance sheet transactions before April 17.
If I were you, I would start my review on April 1 and see what results that produces. I pick that date because I suspect changes were occurring a couple weeks before the announcement. That is also the time frame when major revisions to transaction forms were taking place after some infrastructure improvements.
@FCP, I was looking at the wrong column of dates when I wrote post #6. The announcements about changing tracking codes to divisions were on June 17, not April 17. So let me revise my recommendation on your review start date to June 1. Sorry about that. I had too many windows open trying to find the information for you.