Tracking profit on "events" where the customer is not the only entity invoiced

Wendy_7731692

Issue:

For one of my clients, we want to track income and expenses against an “event”, and I had started to use Reckon’s Customer:Job structure for this as I’ve used it successfully in other environments.

However, I’ve realised that it won’t always work – the reason being that the Customer:Job structure is tied to the concept that the Customer is the entity you are invoicing (ie where all your income comes from).

Although that is true only for some of our Events –there are some where multiple entities (including the “Customer”) are invoiced – an example being that someone may pay for sponsorship or advertising rights at the event. Although I could raise the invoice against the primary customer and change the billing address, this is not ideal as it corrupts AR reporting and can be tedious manually typing the (eg) sponsor’s name and address every time I want to raise an invoice.

Is there a way to record the income from a different customer against this Event (or job)? What other ways can I can track profitability of these events? 

Thanks 

Shannon Sciuto

Hi Wendy - it sounds like you are looking for "classes".  You'll need to turn them on in your preferences. 

Check out this link: 

http://kb.reckon.com.au/issue_view.asp?ID=159

John Graetz

Hi Wendy.  The problem with setting up Classes during the "middle of a year" means that all other transactions already recorded for the year will be treated as "unclassified", unless you go through and apply a different Class against each of them.
There is another effective way to cater for this.  On the income side set up separate Income Accounts e.g. Event 1 Income, Event 2 Income etc.  If you wanted to break down the income further for each event, you could use sub-accounts under each of these Income Accounts.  On the expenditure side, you could then do similarly e.g. Event 1 Costs, Event 2 Costs etc. 
With Classes operating, you would be able to readily see the P&L for that whole class, whereas using the alternative method that I have suggested, you would need to isolate the components from the Profit and Loss Report to arrive at the profitability.  It may be possible to set up a special report to be able extract that information.  John L G

John Graetz

Hi Wendy.  The problem with setting up Classes during the "middle of a year" means that all other transactions already recorded for the year will be treated as "unclassified", unless you go through and apply a different Class against each of them.
There is another effective way to cater for this.  On the income side set up separate Income Accounts e.g. Event 1 Income, Event 2 Income etc.  If you wanted to break down the income further for each event, you could use sub-accounts under each of these Income Accounts.  On the expenditure side, you could then do similarly e.g. Event 1 Costs, Event 2 Costs etc. 
With Classes operating, you would be able to readily see the P&L for that whole class, whereas using the alternative method that I have suggested, you would need to isolate the components from the Profit and Loss Report to arrive at the profitability.  It may be possible to set up a special report to be able extract that information.  John L G

Wendy_7731692

Thanks Shannon & John.  I started to head down the Classes track (mid-year wasn't a problem, more important is mid-event, so I picked an event that didn't yet have many transactions to go back through). Looked good - reports gave us what we wanted. 
Until I came to do the credit card transactions for expenses related to the events, to find that there doesn't appear to be a way to put a class against a cc transaction or when writing a cheque. The class can only go on the bill. Given the number of transactions that go through our cc that need to be allocated to an event, this is going to just double my workload. 
I see what you mean John about the separate Income and Expenses lines, but as you say the reporting really doesn't support it, it would be clunky and I feel there would be potential to "lose" items due to user error. 

John Graetz

Hi Wendy.  Because you are able to enter Classes for Invoices there is no known reason to me that stops you doing it for both cheques and credit cards - in fact cheques is my major use of classes.  Perhaps you cannot see the additional columns.  To the far right of the Account, Tax, Gross Amt and Memo columns are three further columns for Customer:Job, Billable? and Class.  Perhaps you cannot read the column headings because they are all scrunched up to the right.  If that is the case, drag the columns to the left to widen them and then you should be able to read the column headings.  See how you go with that.  I have Classes  turned on and use classes for every income and expenditure transaction.
John L G

Wendy_7731692

yep, feeling a bit silly - it was there, just not obvious - widened the column & all good. Thanks.

John Graetz

Glad that it all worked out for you Wendy.  We all have to learn the little things as well as the big things.  Sometimes not everything is obvious when you don't know what you are supposed to be looking for!!  John L G