I am taking over the accounting for a non profit soccer club that has been using Manager for a number of years. I want to create new divisions Juniors, Seniors and Admin to record the ongoing functions within the club.
I note that on the Chart of Accounts you can specify Balance Sheet accounts by division but not so on the P & L Accounts. Seems only way to get a division breakdown on the P & L is to allocate it on an item by item basis. That could be fine going forward but since we want to be able to look at data from previous years by division then that is a big task even allowing for batch update.
Some of the accounts fall naturally into a particular division such as Junior Fees and Senior Fees so simply adding the division at the chart of accounts level would save a considerable amount of work.
Given that we are all volunteers with limited time to spare any good ideas on how to minimise the workload would be appreciated.
Your implementation of Manager may need to have divisions activated; the full guides are currently here Guides | Manager; divisions can be found under the “Program Features” heading.
That’s not how it works with PNL items. You are able to tag the division when the system detected the PNL account upon entry. This is good since we do not have to create separate PNL accounts per division that may lead to redundancy.
Responders so far seem to be missing the point of my post. I have read the guides and I know that the divisions need to be activated which I have done but I also know that the divisions can only be used with new transactions going forward. Says so in the guides!!
I want to be able to allocate the division codes to those transactions already in place for prior years and so far I can only see two options. Recode each transaction that is already in the system or do so using batch update which is essentially the same thing.
Since some of the existing accounts can only apply to one division it would be a preferable step to tag that account at the Chart of Accounts thereby allowing the transactions in that account to be tagged accordingly.
I get it and you want to avoid to do some hard work using batch updates or recoding and prefer the developer to add yet another function that may not work as you envision. This is not as simple as tagging a charts of accounts but about the underlying data that each transaction needs to be populated with. In this case adding divisions to your existing selected data and that is exactly what recoding and batch update do. From experience using batch update is far quicker and easier than you describe and will be far less work for the developer to figure out how to yet add another functionality that is for a one-off specific use and user while the transformation is possible through already existing means.
Eko is correct in that batch update will be the best way to edit prior transactions.
If I understand this correctly, you’re looking for any transaction posted to a certain account to automatically be allocated to the appropriate division, e.g. anything posted to the “Senior Fees” account to be automatically assigned to the “Senior” division? If so, I would suggest exploring Payment Rules, Use payment rules to categorize imported transactions | Manager. You can set transactions that meet certain criteria to automatically post to appropriate expense accounts, with division allocation.
The drawback is this will only work for transactions imported from bank statements that would have relatively consistent parameters for Manager to identify, so it may not bring all the automation you’re looking for, but could be something to save time.
For transactions entered manually, you will have to select a division each time. I’ll concede this can be an annoyance, but it’s literally just a couple more clicks; since Manager is free to use (I’m assuming the NFP is using the desktop version) I’d offer it’s not that bad of a trade-off.
As I said I was looking for ideas and the Bank Rules will allow us to set the division automatically for certain transaction going forward and I thank you for that one!
It does not work retrospectively unfortunately so I am still looking for a way to to update data that is already there and it looks like batch update is the only option. I don’t think recode will work as it appears to only switch from one account to another.
As I said we are volunteers with real jobs and families that demand our time and I have already spent enough of it on this already!
Last thought looking at some of the old posts there used to be something called tracking codes but that has gone away? Would that have been an option?
Divisions replaced tracking codes (see Divisions (previously tracking codes) and balance sheet accounts) so these are not an option. As for your time spent on this, you started to say that you took it over after some years of operating and the desire to now create divisions is your own so is the required work of your own making.
baldi is taking over the accounts and wants a more detailed analysis of income and costs - it is not his fault that previous accounts do not have the data for this new requirement
I would say that as the work is done on a volunteer basis, the best option is to use divisions from now on and accept that detailed comparable reports will only be available next year and from then on
That is the reality many times when software adds features or users want to start taking advantage of ones already there. You cannot compare data that isn’t there, and the effort and expense of adding data retroactively are seldom worth it.