Tutorial - Creating Sub-account Groupings

Financial formulas can be used to create sub-account sub-totals. For the sake of this tutorial it will be assumed that you will be working with the standard chart of accounts. The sub-accounts and the sub-total we wish to display will be for motor vehicle expenses.

The basic procedure is as follows:

1.      Modify the expenses group to exclude the sub-total we wish to display separately.

2.      Add a new financial formula that includes the sub-account range.

3.      Place the sub-account range on the report.

4.      Include the new sub-account range in the report's calculations.

The account code range that you decide to select for grouping your sub accounts is not important. A sequential set of account codes will, however, make life easier. Let's imagine for the moment that you have added the following accounts to the standard chart:

20260-1 - motor vehicle number plate 123455

20260-2 - motor vehicle number plate 456789

20260-3 - motor vehicle number plate 500000

We wish to exclude these from the normal expense listing, then show them after all other expenses are displayed, but with a separate sub-total.

(For the purpose of the exercise you may wish to create a new temporary general ledger and add these extra codes. For full instructions on how to add/create a company, see: Create Company Wizard.)

Step 1

Start the general ledger and go to the maintenance menu and select financial formulas.

Step 2

Click the expenses group to highlight and then click edit to edit. The following screen will appear:

Step 3

Change the to account field from 25999 to 20259. In other words, we want the group to end just before motor vehicle expenses are listed. Click ok, you will return to the main financial formula screen.

Step 4

We also want to include all expenses after motor vehicle expenses back into the financial formula. To do this click add to add. Enter all the information in the box as it appears in step 2 above. However, change the from account to read: 20300 and the to account to read: 25999. Click Ok when finished, you will return to the main financial formula screen.

Important note: if you have entered account codes between 20260-3 (end of motor vehicle expenses) and 20300 (start of next expense code) then you should be careful to include these expenses as well. That is, you would change the 20300 entry to whatever the next expense code beyond motor vehicle expenses, actually was. If the next expense code was, say, 20270, not 20300, then you should have entered 20270 instead.

The expenses section of your chart of accounts has now been divided by financial formulas into looking something like this:

20000 accountancy fees

20100 adverting

...

20260-1 motor vehicle number plate 123455

20260-2 motor vehicle number plate 456789

20260-2 motor vehicle number plate 500000

20300 bad debts

20400 cleaning

...

22300 waste disposal

Step 5

The final step to do with the financial formula table is to enter a group specifically for motor vehicle expenses. To do this press click add to add. Enter the information so that it looks the same as the following entry:

The final part of this exercise involves adding the new expenses group expvehicle to your financial statement. Note: if you are using more than one financial statement report you must follow these steps for each report. (it is also a good idea to make a back-up of your reports onto disk before you start to modify them.)

Step 6

Leave the financial formulas section and move to reports|report writer/editor. Click open to produce a list of available reports. Let's say you wish the sub-account information to initially appear on your profit & loss and balance sheet month-to-date and year-to-date style report. Select the file name "Account3.gpt" which is one of the basic reports named P&L/balance mtd/ytd by clicking the file name and then clicking ok.

Step 7

Scroll using the scroll bar to the expenses section of the report.

Step 8

Move the cursor so that it blinking on top of the open square bracket (at the beginning of the line) on the line that contains the statement: [@newpage]. Press the[enter] key 8 times to make room for some new entries on the report.

Step 9

Copy the section of the report starting with the line that reads: ! [@setzero] and ending with the line that reads: net profit into this new blank area. However, wherever you see the name expenses change this in the new section to expvehicle.

Step 10

We now need to test the report. Click preview and when the printer dialogue box appears click preview again. If there are any errors on the report the system will alert you. You should inspect the line the report writer takes you too and the line above for any typing discrepancies. Check and correct any typing mistakes. Be careful that you don't miss any extra ( ) or [ ] symbols. When there are no more errors reported, check that the alignment of the numbers are correct. If any number columns appear a little too far to the right, use the delete key to delete any extra blank spaces. If the alignment of the numbers are too far to the left, use the spacebar to add extra space.

Step 11

Finally, to save the report click save as button, you can either rename the report file or save as the same file name. Click Ok to save.

The report writer/editor is discussed in more in another topic. For more detailed information see: Quick Report Writer and the Report Writer/Editor. However, no special knowledge of the report designer/editor is required in order to be able to add sub-account groupings.