Industry-Specific Accounts

When you choose the construction/contractor industry type for your company, Sage 50 Accounting automatically generates a list of accounts you will find most useful based on your industry type; if you set up your company with the Setup Wizard, you can also choose a company type (based on industry-type), and ownership structure which will further define the selection of company accounts that are set up for you automatically.

What are industry-specific accounts?

Industry-specific accounts include the accounts you need for your type of business. You can easily remove accounts you do not plan to use, rename accounts to more clearly identify what the account is used for, or add accounts to track additional sales or expense amounts:

If you operate a construction business and choose Contractor - General as your company type, Sage 50 Accounting adds the following accounts:

1210 Holdbacks Receivable (asset account)

4100 Construction Management

4110 Residential - New Projects

4120 Residential - Renovations

4125 Residential - Repairs

4130 Commercial - New Projects

4135 Commercial - Renovations

4140 Commercial - Repairs

4150 Land Development

Separate accounts are also set up for: subcontractor expenses (5190), purchases (5200, such as tools, permits and licences, equipment rentals, dump fees). If you provide in-house services, you should consider where you want to track specific services (design/site inspection/drafting) and the materials/supplies used for those services.

You may also want to identify an account for customer deposits if you require a deposit before starting a project (2460 Customer Deposits).

If you operate a small family-run hotel and choose Motel as your company type, Sage 50 Accounting will add the following inventory asset accounts:

1550 Linen

1560 Rugs

1570 Glassware

...and the following revenue accounts:

4050 Rooms

4060 Dining Room

4070 Conventions

4080 Banquets

4200 Sales

You may want to modify the sales inventory accounts to help identify revenue earned on specific items you sell at the front desk. You can also group different types of inventory together to organize the inventory for different reporting purposes, which can even make year-end counts easier.

Non-profit organizations consist of a group of associations and organizations, charitable and non-charitable. If you operate a non-profit arts society that offers after school art programs for kids, and does not solicit funds by telephone or through door-to-door sales, you can rename these revenue accounts to account for program fees, education grants, and for fundraising through community events. When you choose the Association company type, Sage 50 Accounting will add:

4100 Membership Fees

4110 Donations - Bequests

4120 Donations - Corporate

4130 Operating Revenue from Fund Raising

4140 Operating Revenue from Other Source

4150 Program Fees

Should I use projects or departments?

Projects are more flexible than departments as they are not directly linked to accounts. They are more accommodating as they can reflect customer job cost and revenue details affecting multiple accounts. For example, you could set up a project for an internal activity, such as a new sales initiative, or for a customer's renovation project. Projects allow you to easily allocate revenues and expenses and then generate project reports that show revenue and expense details across multiple fiscal years. Project reports are not comparative, they show current revenues and expenses by customer, one at a time.

Departmental accounting allows you to track revenues and expenses related to specific business units, with a direct link to an account, for a specific fiscal year. For example, you may want to track the revenues earned by the marketing departments in both your eastern and western divisions, or the administration costs of your local branch vs the head office. If you choose to use departments, department reports are designed to show a comparative analysis between departments. You can also generate departmental income statements and balance sheets for a closer look at total revenues and expenses by department. (Sage 50 Premium Accounting)

Industry-Specific Accounts

What are industry-specific accounts?

Should I use projects or departments?

What do you want to do?