Beginning with Control 4.40.1002.1901, products can now define which Expense Account will be used for each part type on line items in orders, estimates, and service tickets. Below we will explain in more detail how this works.

Prior to this version, the expense account used for a line item's part was selected directly from the part's setup. Within the product setup there is now a mechanism to control the expense account selection with more flexibility.

A new tab has been added within product setup named Accounting. This tab contains the taxability code for the product, the Income Account used, and the GL Department (if department tracking is turned on). These fields all existed previously on the Product or Pricing Tabs. Additionally a section has been added that contains an expense account drop down for each part type. The options available for the expense account will include:

  • Use Individual Part Expenses: This will coincide with the current behavior of expense account selection. This will also be the default option selected.
  • Use Category's Expense: This will allow individual part type expense accounts to be inherited from the Product Category.
  • A list of the expense accounts set active in Accounting Setup.

Product Categories additionally will have options to choose these expense account settings on an Accounting Tab very similar to the new one in Product Setup. These options will also be able to be inherited down at the product level. Additionally you will be able to set these expense account settings as global templates in order to quickly change them when needed.

The expense account settings will also be available on the advanced tab of each line item on orders, estimates, and service tickets. These can be set and will override the settings defaulted in from the product setup.

Finally there will be an additional option on the accounting tab of product setup that can be set to make a product use its parent product's accounting settings if it is a child product on the order, estimate, or service ticket.

Product Setup Accounting Tab

productaccountingtab.jpg

Product Category Accounting Tab

productcategoryaccountingtab.jpg

Line Item Advanced Tablineitemadvancedframe.jpg

Examples

These examples use a simplified Roll Print product

Example 1

Expenses will default to the part expense account

This is the default operation of a product in regards to its expenses.

All expenses by default are set to use the part's expense account

  1. Create an order with the Roll Print Product on it
  2. Save the order and mark it a sale
  3. Looking at the activity for the order we will see GL Entries for the parts that have had usage posted to them.
  4. We will see an entry for our vinyl material cost that looks similar to this
Vinyl Supplies100
Cost of WIP/Built 100

- Looking at the part accounting tab in part setup for that part we see that its expense account is “Vinyl Supplies”
partvinylaccountingtab.jpg
Example 2
Part Expense accounts set on the product will take priority over the expense account on each part
All expense by default are set to use the part's expense account

  1. Edit the Roll Print Product from example 1
  2. Change the material expense account on the product to “Roll Print Expense”
  3. Create an order with the Roll Print Product on it
  4. Save the order and mark it a sale
  5. Looking at the activity for the order we will see GL Entries for the parts that have had usage posted to them.
  6. We will see an entry for our vinyl material cost that looks similar to this
Roll Print Expense 100
Cost of WIP/Built 100

- Looking at the GL Entries we see that its expense account is “Roll Print Expense”

  1. Looking at the other parts' GL Entries we will see that they used the account that was set up on each of their parts, except for the material parts which will all be using “Roll Print Expense”

Example 3
Expense account settings can be inherited from parent categories
Use the Product from example 2
This product is in the Digital Prints Product Category which has all it's expense accounts set to “Use Part's Expense Account” by default

  1. Edit the Product Category
  2. Change the equipment expense account to “Digital Expense”
  3. Leave the rest of the accounts as they are
  4. Edit the Roll Print Product
  5. Set the equipment expense account to “Use Parent Category's Expense Account”
  6. Repeat the order creation steps from the above examples
  7. Looking at the activity for the order we will see GL Entries for the parts that have had usage posted to them.
  8. We will see an entry for our equipment cost that looks similar to this
Digital Expense 100
Cost of WIP/Built 100

- Looking at the GL Entries we see that the expense account for the printer is “Digital Expense”

  1. Any other equipment part costs will likewise use the Digital Expense account, while the materials will all use the Roll Print Expense account, and the other types of parts will use the accounts set on each individual part.

Example 4

Expense accounts can be overridden on a line item

  1. Create a new order with the roll print product
  2. On the Line Item's Pop up window, go to the advanced tab.
  3. At the bottom of the window in the section with the expense accounts change the labor expense account to “Roll Print Expense”
  4. The box will now show as overridden and changes to the product and re-saving will not overwrite this expense account chosen.

Example 5

Expense accounts set on bills cannot be overridden.

  1. Create a new order with the roll print product and save it
  2. Create a new bill
  3. For the first item add the vinyl part from the roll print product
  4. Assign that bill line item to the order and line item using the appropriate columns on the bill entry screen
  5. Choose expense account Digital Expense
  6. Save the bill
  7. Set the order to a sale
  8. In this case the Vinyl and the equipment parts would be saved to the Digital Expense Account, all other materials would be saved to “Roll Print Expense”, and all parts of other types will have their costs saved to the expense account defined on each part.

Advantages

This feature has two main advantages

  • Enables the user to be able to set the Expense Accounts used ahead of time for a given product
  • Enables the user to be able to override the expense accounts on each line item as necessary.


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