Bulk account change

Rob_9593369 · July 10

Just wondering if it's possible to do a bulk re-allocation of account for a particular supplier?

So I have 2 farms - lets call them Moree & Grafton, operating under the one company file.

As an example, for 20 years I've allocated cheques to both Moree and Grafton Vet's to the one account - Vet Expenses.

I now have the need to separate those past expenses for comparative purposes.

So I've created 2 new sub-accounts of Vet Expenses - Vet Expenses Moree, and Vet Expenses Grafton.

I do a Supplier Fast Report for all cheques to the Moree Vet, currently residing in the main account, Vet Expenses.

Is there a way to do a bulk change of account for all those cheques to the new sub-account, Vet Expenses Moree?

Or do I have to do it cheque by cheque?

I can't find a way.

Kris_Williams · July 10

I would do a journal entry - but if you are talking about many years you would have to do one for each year on 30/6 so it doesn’t skew previous financial reports

Credit to vet expenses

Debit to vet expenses - Moree

Debit to vet expenses - Grafton

Datarec · July 10

Hi @Rob_9593369

The method that Kris recommends is best as it preserves the way that figures had been recorded.

How many individual transactions would you need to manually change if you were intent on doing so?

Acctd4 · July 11

@Rob_9593369 There are some Reckon-integrated 3rd party developers on this forum (like @cosmic or @PhuongDo) who could probably do this for you.

NOTE: They are independent businesses so there would be a cost involved 😊

PhuongDo · July 11

Hi @Rob_9593369

I’m happy to build something to update all transaction to use the correct accounts following your logic. As long as it is what you want and you enable the book to be able to modify old data. Please contact me if you want to learn more about it.

Graham Boast · July 12

Class tracking rather than subaccounts would be more appropriate for the business model you describe. I would just do a single annual journal Cr Vet Expenses Dr Vet Expenses Class Moree Dr Vet Expenses Class Grafton. A P&L by Supplier may be a quick way to determine the figures for each.

Rob_9593369 · July 21

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20656673#Comment_20656673

Thanks Kris, and everyone else for your input.

Journal entries frighten me. I don't understand them, and leave them to my accountant, so I'll stay away from that.

It just seems silly that when you set up a new supplier, Reckon doesn't ask what account you usually want that cheque to go to?

Let's say I've got 10 working kelpies, and a chihuahua called Amigo. Pretty true actually.

The kelpie's Vet bills are legit tax expenses. Amigo's are not - he just sleeps on the couch 🤣

The kelpies expenses should go to the "Vet Expenses" account, but Reckon only does that after I write the very first chq to Moree Vet, and it then asks what account it should go to. It then repeats forever.

Until one rare day, Amigo gets sick. So being a good law abiding taxpayer, I change the account for Amigo's cheque to "Drawings" - not a deductible expense.

Amigo recovers - the next cheque I write to Moree Vet is for the kelpies, and unless I'm watching like a hawk, Reckon repeats the last entry and allocates it to "Drawings" again, instead of "Vet Expenses" where it should be.

It happens all the time, across many suppliers - the Vet is just an example. It's very annoying, and often involves hours of re-allocation.

Why can't we just set a default Account to every Supplier, that it always reverts to rather than repeating the last entry?

That would also solve my original query - I could just edit the Moree Vet supplier to send everything to the new Account, Moree Vet Expenses, with a single box tick rather than doing it chq by chq.

See what I mean?

Do any Reckon developers hang out here?

Thanks if you've stuck with me this far - I'll keep working my way through them one by one 😓

Kris_Williams · July 21

I can understand your frustrations and am happy to help you with journal entries if you would like to give me a call, they are not that hard to understand with a little explanation. You can stop transactions auto recalling and many people do, however I prefer them that way but always tell people they must always look at the recalled account and make sure it’s relevant to the current transaction

Good luck with it

If you need any help feel free to call

0415 940843

Rob_9593369 · July 23

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20657084#Comment_20657084

Thanks for your kind offer to hold my hand and explain journal entries Kris, but we'll have to make that a date sometime in the future I think - It still scares me. So wha - you can make a single journal entry and change a thousand chqs? No,no,no…🤣

Yep, I also prefer auto-recall when writing chqs. But you're right - one must pay attention, every time, to the account it's going to, its tax code, and it's memo (which also repeats). It kinda defeats the purpose of the software though yeah? Unless you're running a coffee shop where everything is always the same. Farms aren't like that.

One last thing - perhaps it was on a different thread, but regarding my recurring issues with activating the latest version of Reckon Desktop Plus.

After lots of my precious time on hold with the erm … friendly folk from Reckon, they advised to ignore the standard pop-up activation window that appears every time the program is started.

Close that, and hit "Control 3". That brings up a different activation window which actually works … WTF? 😂

Cheers Guys

Kris_Williams · July 23

No worries Rob, but just to clarify what I would do based on my understanding of your problem. You could do a report for each year if possible to identify the transactions and do one journal per year transferring to the relevant sub accounts.

And I do agree with you regarding the memo auto recalling, it can be frustrating at times, I went through this just yesterday with my sister who is just a basic user and not always as observant as someone who does it all the time. She turned the feature off altogether. I do think it saves time but again you have to be vigilant.

Any time you want that date I’m up for it 🤪

Datarec · July 24

Hi @Rob_9593369

In your original post you stated: "I do a Supplier Fast Report for all cheques to the Moree Vet, currently residing in the main account, Vet Expenses."

If you generated that report for the period "All Dates" and then exported it to Excel, can you confirm how many rows are in the Excel sheet?

If you performed a similar process for "Grafton Vet", how many rows are in the Excel sheet?

Rob_9593369 · July 24

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20657174#Comment_20657174

Hi,

The Excel for Moree Vet is104 rows, including headers.

The Excel for Grafton Vet is 41 rows, including headers.

Cheers, Rob

Kris_Williams · July 24

I hate to harp on this Rob, but for just 2 accounts to move I still can guarantee a journal for each year would be very simple. The journal itself would take about 20 seconds for each year once you had the fast reports totals

Datarec · July 24

Hi @Rob_9593369

Based on that info you have provided, the creation of a journal per year method described by @Kris_Williams would be:

faster than manually editing each cheque and re-assigning them to a different account
keep the historical reports consistent if you were to compare them to past hard copy records

If there were thousands of rows in those Excel sheets representing thousands of transactions, we can offer a data service to recreate those original transactions such that they reference the specific accounts based on the nominated suppliers.

Rob_9593369 · July 25

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20657192#Comment_20657192

Hi Kris,

Well it will be for most of my 60 or 80 accounts, both expense and income.

But I'm all ears. As I say I've never had anything to do with them - don't even know what they are!

Could you briefly explain how to do one for this purpose please?

I guess first step is to set up all the new accounts, eg Grafton Vet Exp, and Moree Vet Exp - both of which would be sub-accounts of Vet Expenses yeah? And then do the the journal entries for the individual payees that will allocate them to the correct account?

Thanks, Rob

Kris_Williams · July 25

first of all Rob I wasn’t thinking about doing the journal for individual payees, just the totals for each sub category, however both can be done, but the payees will be a bit longer, about how many payees are there?

If you do a fast report and have a breakdown for 1 year for say Moree 2000.00 and Grafton 5000.00

The journal would be

Company

Make General journal entries

30/6/25 Debit Credit Name

Moree vet expenses 2000

Grafton vet expenses 5000

Vet expenses 7000

No tax codes

If you want to do it my supplier total

Moree vet expenses 500 Supplier 1

Moree vet expenses 600 Supplier 2

Moree vet expenses 900 Supplier 3

Grafton vet expenses 1000 Supplier 2

Grafton vet expenses 3000 supplier 4

Grafton Expenses 1000 Supplier 2

Vet expenses 7000

A separate journal for each year if you need to go back to previous years.

Good luck and feel free to call me any time if you need any further explanation

Kris 0415 940843

I am attaching a screenshot in case the formatting changes

Kris_Williams · July 25

if you are also doing income it’s just done in reverse

The income account is credited line by line and debited in total with the customer name line by line if required

Graham Boast · July 26

Hi Rob

You really need to be doing class tracking. Edit > Preferences > Accounting > Use Class Tracking.

You can then set up your classes via List > Class List. Once you turn this on, you will have a Class column where you can allocate expenses to the appropriate property.

You can then do a profit and loss by class. This will give you a profit and loss with a column for each property, and a column for "unclassified" where you forgot to add in the class.

Note that you now only have one expense account - Vet Fees. If you buy a third property, you only need to add a single class rather than 80 accounts. Importantly, you can easily get the total picture for each property.

I would also set up a "Company" class for fees that aren't applicable to an individual property (eg your Reckon subscription.

Last point but an important one - a supplier fast report will give you the gross figures (incl GST), whereas your P&L reports on net of GST. Reports > Company & Financial > Expenses by Supplier Summary will be better.

Kris_Williams · July 26

I do agree with Graham and you could do that from this year onwards but to fix prior years I think the journal is easiest. You could use the classes in the journal. But I believe if you use class tracking you have to use it on all transactions to get the desired result.

Rob_9593369 · July 28

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20657231#Comment_20657231

Thanks guys,

All very helpful, interesting and confusing at the same time 😅

Especially Graham's suggestion for class tracking, because a separate P&L for the individual properties is my end desire!

Anyway, I'm about halfway through doing it the agricultural way - allocating each chq and invoice, one by one, to their new individual accounts.

So I'm probably committed to continue, even now that I realize I still won't be able to do separate P&L's … or will I?

I guess I'll have to add the Class Tracking after I've finished re-allocating all the transactions to their new Accounts. Is there a bulk way of doing that retrospectively? Journal entries I guess Kriss?

And for any Reckon developers that might be watching, when I create a new "Item", Reckon requires me to nominate the "Account" that it should usually go to.

But, when I create a new "Customer" or "Supplier", Reckon doesn't ask for an "Account" it should usually go to.

Why not? For all Reckon's wonderful capabilities, this seems to be a glaring omission.

It would certainly save me some late nights atm, and the nagging worry that I'm interfering with a cake that's already been baked.

Sheesh, I think I should stick to driving tractors 🤣

Thanks again all,

Rob

Kris_Williams · July 28

Suppliers and customers do not always use the same accounts, sometimes you can purchase different categories from the same supplier and sell different services to the same customer

Class tracking does work - you can do a profit and loss by class, but unless you can add a class to every transaction it’s not very successful. If you have created sub accounts for vet expenses you will have the correct breakdown anyway.
‘you can also customise a P & L to show just the accounts you need

Good luck Rob

Acctd4 · July 28

@Rob_9593369 It could also be problematic though … what about when you buy something from somewhere generic like Kmart ?
… Could be stationery, workwear, amenities, motor expense etc !

Rob_9593369 · July 28

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20657279#Comment_20657279

Oh yeah, tell me about it.

I think it's especially problematic for farmers, as we have such a wide variety of claimable expenses.

As I said before, taking the Kelpie to the Vet is deductible, but the Chihuahua is not - so they need to go to different accounts.

One must check every transaction entry carefully.

And as I've recently worked out, put a memo on every cheque, and use Splits.

Similarly, put as much info as possible into the Description field on Invoices.

It takes longer to enter, but it will reward you one day.

Makes me wonder, how do larger operations cope when Suppliers don't be really specific with their invoices … eg my Ag Supply store must be the last place in Australia to do hand written invoices 😂 He sells all kinds of things, and describes them with a bunch of unreadable scribble on an invoice.

It could be $5k worth of workshop tools, or $5k worth of garden gnomes 🤔 The only person that knows is me … so I guess you either do your own books, or keep very good communications with your remote book keeper!

Anybody catch 4 Corners on ABC tonight? 😮

Kris_Williams · July 28

You might benefit by a few hours training from an accredited trainer who could help you streamline things specific to your needs, and give you some general tips and hints re Reckon

Bulk account change

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