Fixed Assets and Employees

1

Hi!

I’ve started using Manager to record the ins & outs of the computer infrastructure department at the company.

This means that i have a bunch of fixed assets like computers, keyboards, monitors, desks that are in-use by the employees which generate me revenue.
What i would like to accomplish is keeping a record of:

  1. How much does a new employee costs
  2. How much does an employee cost me on a monthly basis taking into account trips, maintenance of assets and such
  3. What equipment is currently allocated to the employee.

For instance one of the employees we have uses 2 monitors, one Macbook, a Mouse, Desk and Chair

Right now i have enabled:

  • Fixed Assets to enter the assets we have
  • Receipts & Payments to record when we spend money on a new employee or reimburse them for a fixed asset they bought
  • Employees to enter my employees in
  • Bank Accounts to add the department as an account

Points one and two i can accomplish easily, okay
The third point is what i have been having issues to accomplish.
I can’t seem to be able to link a specific fixed asset to the employee in a way that i can generate a report on which fixed assets are in possession of that employee.
This information is relevant to the company so we can calculate how much an employee is generating of revenue taking into account the depreciation of the employee’s working equipment.

Is that something that i should be doing in manager or should i look for a different software?
If this is something manager is capable of doing, how should i go about doing that?

Thanks a lot!

2

This is incorrect. Bank Accounts are for accounts at financial institutions, not department.

Use a custom field. Set it to show as a column. See https://www.manager.io/guides/8941.

Also, consider using tracking codes for each employee. See https://www.manager.io/guides/8956.

3

Okay, i will read up those two guides and try to figure it out;

Okay, it seems like i got the bank accounts wrong, should i use special accounts for a department or a normal account registered in the chart of accounts?
From what i have read it seems like special accounts is what i need because the infrastructure department is in a situation analogous to the real estate agent requiring subsidiary ledgers for trust accounts. Would that understanding be correct?

Kind regards

4

This depends on what you are really trying to do. You have not clearly explained what department you are writing about or why you are trying to separate accounting transactions for it from those for the rest of the company.

You also wrote about keeping track of expenses for individual employees. This implies tracking codes. But tracking codes do not apply to balance sheet accounts. On the other hand, special accounts are only for balance sheet accounts. They cannot be used to track income and expenses.

It strikes me that some of what you want to do has little to do with accounting. Nevertheless, some of Manager’s features (such as the ability to add custom fields to fixed assets) can be helpful. In the end, I think you will end up using several of Manager’s capabilities to get what you want. The trick will be to carefully design your chart of accounts, build it out, and try it in a test company using the sorts of transactions you want to be included in your scheme. The time spent doing that will more than compensate the effort involved, because it will keep you from having to redo your real accounting records.

5

Thanks for the help, i’ll try to explain myself better.

I’m from the Infrastructure department for the company i work at. We take care of all the infrastructure for the whole company and pretty much have a blank check at the beginning of every month to spend on what we see fit.

This leaves me in a position where i have to track what we are spending, where we are spending, to which employee we are sending the assets and how much each employee is costing the department on a monthly basis.

What i need to accomplish is:

  • Be able to generate reports on our fixed assets (computers, etc) for the financial & accounting department.
  • Reimburse our employees for the equipment they bought on behalf of the company
  • Have a annual report on our financial situation, how much we spent and where

These reports include:

  • Cost of assets, depreciation, monthly expenditure, assets in possession for a single employee
  • Assets In our possession
  • Depreciation of the assets
  • Projection of cost for the next month
  • Annual financial balance

With this in mind i believe manager is the right software, what do you think?

Edit: Wanted to add more information

Right now i use a huge, bulky and quite heavy spreadsheet that is getting even slower day by day as new assets are added.

6

Manager does not sound like the right software for what you are doing, because you have no need to record and analyze the kinds of information a double-entry accounting system normally provides. If I was to set out to do what you have described, I would simply use a spreadsheet. It would be much less work.