Compound Groups

It cannot only get tedious, but increase the potential for making mistakes, if we need to enter a large number of account ranges every time we want to compute a complicated accounting balance. Fortunately, a shorter way to define complex calculations is to use compound groupings.

Compound groups are similar to real groups, except you do not specify an actual account code range to add or subtract from the formula total. Rather, you specify a series of real groups that make up the compound group.

Notice that we have specified the total somewhat differently this time. We specified the cost of sales, for example, as a debit total because we want the cost of sales, at least in this particular case, to return us a positive balance. (Debit amounts increase debit balances).

We can refer to these various accounts indirectly by creating a compound entry as follows:

The rules for addition and subtraction of compound formulas is straightforward. Specify a credit total to add to the balance, and a debit total to decrease the balance. For example, since the balances for sales, costofsales and expenses are all (in this case) positive, we simply specify a formula which adds (a credit) the sales balance and subtracts (debits) the costofsales and expenses balances.

 Compound group formulas do not work the same way as real groups. Compound groups with a total type of "debit" always subtract. Compound groups with a total type of "credit" always add.

Another important rule to observe is that you may not mix real and compound groups together. You cannot, for example, have a group code called "fixedassets" that has multiple entries that refer to an account range, and other entries that specify an other group code. For example, this is not allowed:

When entries have the same group code, the other group field must always be blank or the from account - to account range must be blank.

If you intend to include groups with multiple account code ranges or compound groups in your financial reports you should not mix totals. That is, you shouldn't specify "credits" for some ranges and "debits" for others. Compound groups should be made up of account code ranges with an all credit or all debit total, otherwise groups may not appear to add up correctly on reports. When the financial report writer prints report groups it will determine whether the entire group is to be a "debit" or "credit" group by the debit/credit total of the first group in the list of compound groups.

If you need to perform a series of additions, subtractions, etc., In your financial reports it is more straightforward to use reporting variables to hold the results of calculations, rather than try and perform complex calculations through the set-up of groupings within the financial formula table. More on reporting variables will be discussed in the section on the report designer/editor.

There is a practical limit of about 25 levels of depth for the nesting of compound groups inside other compound groups. In the unlikely event that this limit is exceeded, an error will be reported.