Tracking code on Cash Summary

Dear sir,

Is it possible to make Tracking code Column in Cash summary Report. It will be easy for me to cross verify the expenses allocation on my daily printout of Cash summary. As a clerical error tracking code can be entered wrongly at the time of data entry.

No. Content of that report can only be edited for date ranges. The Cash Summary is focused on which accounts were involved with inflows and outflows, not which tracking codes. But you should be able to get what you want by creating a Profit and Loss Statement for a specific tracking code.

thank you

Dear @lubos, I just started a new job and I’m we are going to run Manager as the main account after we have entered all transactions into Manager. But I would be very very very very grateful if I could select a tracking code for Cash summary, this would be a challenge because tracking codes affect only Profit and loss accounts but cash summary shows both p&l and Balance sheet accounts. But please see if you could help me. The user will then be able to easily get a cash flow report for a code. Which would be awesome for us.

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How do you imagine this to work? If you filter by tracking code, then movements won’t add up to cash/bank account balances.

Can you explain how do you use tracking codes?

Yeah, I didn’t think of that but you are right. I will create an income statement not with Accrual accounting but cash and then pick balance sheet cash activities and do that report.

The aim of this report however is not about getting bank balances right. It about showing which accounts have had cash going in or cash going out (or net cash of that account) through a particular tracking code/cash generating Unit/cost center/an activity. So the balance would be ‘Net Cash balance for Tracking Code ABC’ and wouldn’t have anything to do with cash and bank balances.

In my case, Donors and my company open special bank accounts for projects and if this report is available and the user does everything right, the special bank account’s balance will be equal to the report’s balance because a bank account would be used for only a tracking code (in my case).

I will use the income statement and balance sheet cash accounting method to do this report for now.

Are these projects actual income and expenses of the business (my company) ?
Frequently, project funds are funds held in trust for a specific purpose and isn’t income.
These funds are held as BS Liabilities and any expenditure is deduct from the liability account.

A business maybe entitled to an administration fee, which would then become income.
Special accounts could be used to group the projects together, and the balance on the project’s special account would match the project’s bank account.

I think of it to work the same way it does in the P&L report. This is: filter all cash (and bank) transactions allocated to (actually is the counterpart which is allocated to) an specific tracking code set when the report definition is created by user.

This would be relevant to assess cash flow for specific projects, divisions or branches. I have a client with bank accounts in different countries and asked me once for something like this, he ended up doing it in excel (xD).

Facts are: ( I’m totally unaware of technicality required to do this)

  • you can allocate tracking codes in transactions booked in Balance Sheet accounts (it’s there) so the field exists and the data is stored in the record.
  • you can only use tracking code to report transactions booked in P&L accounts (neither balance sheet nor cash summary can be filtered by tracking codes).

Well, a couple of thoughts.

Correct. It’s possible to set tracking code on balance sheet accounts but it’s not meant to be like that. Balance sheet filtered by tracking codes wouldn’t make sense. Balance sheet is must balance and if you start cherry-picking, it won’t balance. Not to mention balances of accounts on balance sheet will make little sense.

I want to add new module specifically designed for job costing. So for those who are currently using tracking codes to track jobs, they will be able to use this new module and then let’s see where it takes us.

Tracking codes will be eventually renamed to Divisions or Departments to make it more obvious they are meant for divisional or departmental accounting.

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Is there a purpose for that?

It does if you think of ‘business units’ (departments, divisions, branches, etc.).

Guess it is kind of the way you’re heading to with that module.

No. There is not. The option should be probably disabled if balance sheet account is selected.

Tracking codes are set on transaction-level. You don’t allocate individual accounts to divisions.

What it means is that if you have a bank account with balance of $5,000, that is what is shown on balance sheet. If you filter by tracking code and this tracking code has been applied to about half of your bank transactions, your bank balance as per balance sheet would show $2,500 (for argument sake) which is clearly non-sense. This is why tracking codes and balance sheet cannot work together.

Contrary to that explanation, a business may have two divisions that share the one bank account, therefore via tracking codes each division can ascertain their proportion of the bank account. So any tracking code balance sheet is only a subset (extraction), just as with any tracking code P&L, it is only a subset (extraction).

Similarly, they (tracking codes) could be applied to fixed assets, customers suppliers etc, so that you get a division’s balance sheet.

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This would mean open balances for Balance sheet items would have to have the option to split that opening balance for divisions

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