Teadrinker 58,

The allocation to department between Payroll and Sales/Purchases is a little bit different. 

For payroll, I assume in the Paycheques window, you go to Paycheque in the menu bar and select Allocate to Departments for allocation.

In sales and purchases invoice, if you need to put the revenue or expense to a department, you do not go to Sales and select Allocate or double click the Project or Job Sites column, you will specify the account with the department together under the Account column.  For example, if you have a department called administration (0100) and you want to assign the revenue to the revenue account sales (4100), in the account column, you will select 4100-0100 sales - administration.  Then, you will have the sales revenue go under the department administration.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for responding. My department is set up as alpha not numerical. Does that make a difference? Payroll accepted it. I don't get the option in sales or purchases to select a department account. That was what I expected. It just shows my regular GL accounts. I went through the GL first and allocated the GL sac counts that required the department. Maybe that wasn't done correctly? Can I do the department allocation only at the beginning of the year?

Hi Teadrinker58,

Did you setup you department by going to Setup, Settings, General, Departments and then assign your accounts to the departments?

or you just simply use the Project module as department?

Thanks

I think that it will be easier to use Project as department. Yes?

Hi SylvieSu,

For you information, this is the explanation between department and projects.

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)

Hope this helps.

Project reports are not comparative, they show current revenues and expenses by customer, one at a time.

Projects are not / cannot be connected to customers in Sage 50 Canadian. Keith may have meant by Project, and by the period you choose.  The only way to get a summary of a group of projects is to use Excel, or some reporting tool such as Access, Libre Office, Crystal Reports, or 'Intelligence'.  

To add to what Keith said about the greater flexibility of Projects:

Departments can be automatically assigned to  Vendors, Customers, Employees, and Inventory & Service items.   If your business units do not clearly break down along these lines, you will have to do more manual effort to get good information on departments.

In some cases it won't really be possible - for instance, you can over-ride the Sales revenue account's department, but the automatic entry for inventory cost will be made to the customer's assigned department.  So you'll have gibberish - sales in one department, and cost-of-sales in another.