How to use the tracking codes effectively?
What problem are you trying solve? If you are not sure you need them, you probably don’t need them. Tracking codes are for splitting the business by profit/cost center, rental property, region etc. so you can get Profit & Loss Statement per business segment.
I would like to use tracking codes to record income and expenses for small projects rather than profit/cost centres. Currently we can report profit and loss for a tracking code. Can you add the same for the Cash Summary report?
The problem is that the purpose of cash summary is to explain movements across cash/bank accounts so it must include all transactions.
How come Profit & Loss Statement by tracking code doesn’t meet your requirements and Cash Summary by tracking code would?
Thanks for your reply. We operate our accounts on an accrual not cash basis. Our sales are driven by many small projects with income generated by sales invoices issued as progress claims and costs by numerous project purchases, manhour and freight costs. We would like track cash flow by project (tracking code) if possible and feed this information into our external cash flow forecast spreadsheet which as you said reports cash movements across all bank accounts. Project costing allows us to plan margins for the next project.
My tracking codes are not working properly.
- I’ve entered a new tracking code
- On each purchase I record the correct tracking code
- On each sale invoice I record the tracking code
- When I do a profit and loss report for that tracking code, it’s only reporting the sale. None of the purchases are there. When I enter a new purchase I enter it into an expense account called “Items to sell on”. I’m wondering if I’m using this wrong and it should be under another account for it to work properly.
@netconuk, I’m unable to reproduce this. Could you please send an accounting file which demonstrates this issue to bugs@manager.io?