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. I have also posted this to the "Accouting" forum because it gets so many hits. Not trying to create confusion, just need some help and covering all bases.)

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.