Can we use more than one tracking code. for example. One a single sale transaction, i want to track it region wise as well as sales man wise.
That’s a good point. Right now only single dimension is supported but I might be adding support for more in future.
What you can do now, stick with tracking codes per region. And create multiple income accounts - one for each sales person.
I always use “inventory sales” account as my income account. cuz i want to hit my inventory with sales. Is it possible to create another “inventory sales” account with other name or hit inventory by other income accounts ?
Alright, if you are using inventory and want to track inventory sales by sales person, then you definitely need multiple dimensions for tracking codes.
@lubos Hi, regarding this post of yours from Oct’15, is there any development regarding the multiple tracking code implementation in Manager? Is it going to be available anytime soon?
This is to add multi dimensions and obtain segregated reporting for like departments, product groups, multiple revenue sources in single business while minimizing the GL codes in chart of accounts.
So far as I know, this idea of multi-dimensional tracking codes was abandoned. But you can, instead, add as many custom fields as you want and create sales invoice reports by specific custom field. See this Guide: Create sales invoice reports | Manager.
But not a profit & loss statement…
That’s true. But consider the nightmare of trying to produce P&L statements for multi-dimensional tracking codes. The feature was developed to monitor performance of company divisions. It assumes income and expense items can be identified as belonging to one division (tracking code) or another. If you introduce multi-dimensional tracking codes, it is easy to see that you conduct searches based on a sub-code. But how would income and expenses be subdivided?
Suppose the current dropdown box for choosing a tracking code were replaced with multi-tiered menus. An item is identified as belonging to the London Branch Office (tier 1), Commercial Clients (tier 2), and Real Estate Loans (tier 3). If you want to compare P&L statements for Real Estate Loans with Investment Banking (another tier 3 sub-code), you are crossing boundaries of all three tiers for multiple offices, client types, and revenue sources. While you might be able to produce a matrix for selecting what to compare, how would the program know how much of an income or expense item to apportion where? In this example, it is relatively straightforward, but what happens when another user has the idea to create tracking codes for painting and masonry work? A ladder is purchased that can be used for both. Where and how does the expense get allocated? With all the things various users might try to do with tracking codes, the situation gets very complex very quickly.
It’s exactly the logic of an olap cube. You can choose how to drill down the data.
However, to keep it simple, I don’t think that a dimension should permute with another.
I understand. But this gets very hard to implement as a method for defining reports. And it also assumes logical connections among codes so they can occupy a selection space. There is no guarantee users will apply them that way.
Ok in that case, can we have the option to obtain segregated reporting for profit and loss as well as balance sheet (like for cwip accounts) by custom fields the same way as we have for tracking code? That can be a workaround I guess.
Currently I am not clear what reports can be generated with custom fields?
Regards,
Asif Nawab
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As far as I know, quickbooks supports single class tracking like we have single tracking code. Allowing multiple tracking codes can bring up this software to compete against the more expensive Sage Intacct products which bases itself on this multidimensional reporting capability.
People already love the ease of Manager, why not give it more wings @lubos
Regards,
Asif Nawab
Only the sales invoice totals can be reported by custom field. Read the Guides.
I noted that locations is only usable for inventory tracking. For example, in restaurant business or retail outlet chain or pharmacy chain, there is a need to have full P&L by location. I know tracking code can be used for this but can the locations feature be enhanced to generate full P&L reporting by location?
This will enable 3 dimensional reporting which is a very powerful tool in recent times: GL code / Location / Tracking Code. I don’t think it should be much of an issue in implementation.
The problem is that most transactions are not linked to a location.
At the moment, only inventory uses the locations, as you mentioned. What would you do with all of the historical transactions (which could be thousands) generated before such a feature is implemented?
If you must have a full Profit & Loss per location, it sounds like each location is run as a completely separate business entity. If that is the case, you might want to consider using different business files for each.
That, or at the very least, tracking codes for each branch/division: Use divisions for the Profit and Loss Statement | Manager … which you did mention in your post … because tracking codes can already be linked against a transaction.
On the contrary. This would be a complete restructuring of the program to turn something meant for tracking inventory location into full P&L for business branches or divisions. This is very unlikely to happen since a tool for that (tracking codes) already exists.
Don’t think of inventory locations as different places of doing business. They were originally going to be called warehouses, and they are only meant to record physical location of storage for items that might be used anywhere in a business.
The way I’m thinking now is that Tracking Codes will be renamed to Divisions. This will give better idea how tracking codes are ought to be used.
If all you want is to track sales by region, you should create custom field called Region on customer or invoice level (depends what suits you better) and then generate sales report by custom field (region).
Currently, people are using tracking codes for all sort of activities but there are better ways (or there will be better ways).
For example, Manager still doesn’t have proper job costing module. Once job costing is implemented, it will be much easier to track job performance using this module rather than going with general-purpose tracking codes (which really make full sense only in divisional accounting context).
could you please kindly consider Division as main, Department as sub of division, and location to be linked to them. this feature I have seen some of the accounting software. developing this will suite most of the users requirement even in project wise.
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Thanks.Yes Divisions will be more useful. It is possible to extend the “location” and include “cost center” tracking to all forms like the tracking code so that all reports including P&Ls can be filtered and obtained by Cost Center / Division / Location?
This can simplify and reduce the length of chart of accounts. Instead of saying item 1 revenue goes to GL001 and item 2 goes to GL002, we can say item 1 revenue goes to GL001 Division 01 Location 01 and item 2 goes revenue also goes to GL001 but Division 02 Location 01.
For costs, it can be like Gas expense goes to Production cost center, division 01, location 01, petrol goes to selling cost center, division 01, location 01.
Practically, any multi-product or multi-division business wants and makes its reporting like this but only that they create multiple ledgers like Maintenance Production, Maintenance Supply Chain, Maintenance General and then accountants remember a long list of ledger codes due to this feature not available in many software.
With the popularity of Manager, this can be a big big edge and a high value offering few can match for an accounting software. How is that? @lubos
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I guess this could be supported if concept of groups is added to divisions. This way you can get P&L per division but also per group (each group can contain multiple divisions).