Account Departments
Departments represent sections of your company that you
want to examine individually. These sections can be the business units
of your company (such as sales, administration, or human resources), or
they can be organized around specific business activities (such as welding,
service, or machining). Departments can even be used for separate locations
(such as downtown, south side, east end, or international offices) or
different currencies.
Note: You can create up to 100 departments in Sage Simply Accounting Premium, and up to 1000 in Sage Simply Accounting - Enterprise Edition.
In your chart of accounts, departments are represented
by a four-digit extension to account numbers
.
Who uses departments?
Departmental accounting systems are useful to
smaller businesses because of their efficiency in budgeting and tracking:
small-scale departmental accounting systems make it easy to determine
which parts of your business are the most profitable and which ones warrant
closer examination.
Why use Departments?
Departments allow you to compare the different
units of your business. For example, you might want to determine which
units of your business are currently earning the most revenue. To do this,
you just associate a different department with each business unit you
want to examine. You then assign these departments to your customers,
vendors, and employees
Using Departments
Once you have added and assigned your departments,
you can associate purchases, sales, and paycheck transactions.
For example, if your company decides to buy two new printers, one for
marketing and the other for sales, you can assign half of the expense
to each of those departments when you enter the invoice or payment for
them.
Note: The account
icon window (general ledger) does not display departments, and displays
only balances for accounts. To view a breakdown of your account balances
or activities by department, you must print reports using departments.
Note:
Once you begin using departments, you cannot turn this option off.
You can also use
departments to track employee wage expenses.
