Need to generate a custom report for Departments/Cost Center

[gtackett]

(This is a long post. Please be patient. Note to Forum Admin: The ability to attach files to a post would be nice. Also, I have posted in the Custom Reports Forum but because of the volume of postings in "Accounting" I thought I would post here also.)

I am trying to generate some custom reports in PC and am having some difficulty. Currently we use Account Numbers (four digits) as Account Categories and we use the Sub Account numbers (three digits) as department numbers. For example, three of our current accounts are:

5020 – Salaries
5201 – Supplies
5470 – Rentals

Three of our departments are:

200 – Administrative
690 – Education
700 – Missions

A transaction out of the General Fund for Salaries in the Admin department would be coded:

01-5020-200

We, of course, have other categories (about 50) and departments (13), I just used these three to make my question a little simpler. Not all categories are used in each department. For example, our Telecommunications costs are expensed to the Admin department only.

I want to create a P&L report that has the following headings:

Department, Monthly Budget, Monthly Expense, YTD Budget, YTD Expense

The P&L rows will be, of course, income and then the expenses listed by department:

Pastoral
Administration
Worship
Evangelism
Education
etc.

This would be a summary report that would, in one glance, show us where each department stands.

The next report would be a series of specific expense reports for each department. I don’t’ assign income to a department so income would not need to be part of the report. I want an expense report that shows the same headings as above except instead of a ‘Department’ heading, I would have a ‘Category’ (aka 4 digit Account) heading. I still need the budget vs. actual columns.

Remember, not all categories are used with each department. If a particular category is not used by a department, then I don’t want it showing up on the department expense report. For example, the Telecommunications category is never used with the Youth department so I don’t want to see a Telecommunications category on the Youth department expense report.

I have been playing around with the custom reports in PC and I am about to go crazy. I have the custom reports tutorial. It has helped but I’m still not there.

Anybody willing to dive in and help? Thanks in advance.

[Matt]

As I stated in my response to your post from a couple weeks ago, I honestly think that you can get the reports that you want, without having to configure custom reports, by setting up separate funds for each of your 13 departments. Create the new funds and then just assign your current accounts to each fund as appropriate.

[gtackett]

That is really not a feasible option for me. I already have about seven funds (General, Benevolence, Building, Property, Memorial, etc). If I was starting from scratch, then this might be an option. My financial secretary has been at this position for about 13 years with the same C of A. I am willing to create some new catagories and new departments, but creating new funds would really be an entirely new paradigm.

However, if PC is limited in this function and the only way I'm going to get the reports I need is to create new funds, then I may have to. I guess my other choice is to look at some of the other accounting packages and see if they are able to handle this need. Obviously, it would be nice if I could get accomplished thru PC.

[gtackett]

I will at least think and talk it over with my financial secretary. Thanks for the help, but I still would like someone to provide some advice/assistance on how to actually do these reports.

I'm new to the Church Admin function after 15 years in the construction business. What I have learned in the short time here is that change is as easy. I'm not trying to be stubborn but I would like to be able to generate these reports without making to many changes to the structure of our COA and our proceedures. I want my cake and eat it too.

[gtackett]

After learning a little more about the standard reports and getting some help from folks in this forum, I have a suggestion to you guys at PowerChurch on an addtion to one of your standard reports.

The standard report that comes closest to my objectives is the 'Income and Expense Statment'. In this report, I can get all the headings I want. The only thing missing is the ability to filter according to the subaccount number. On the Report Options window, I can pick the period, the accounting funds and the summary level, but I can't pick the subaccounts.

For example, since I am using subaccount 200 for Admin, if I could input this into the Report Options window, I would be in business.

Would that be difficult to add? I hope not too much. Thanks for the opportunity to provide input.