Account Number Segmentation

In order to make it easier to filter the Profit and Loss Report you can set up Account Number Segmentation for your income and expense accounts. This allows you to add groups to your accounts for quick filtering. You can make these segments stand for anything you want, like office location, practice area, color codes, etc.

Setting up Account Segmentation

To set up Account segments on your site you need to navigate to System Settings > Accounting > Account Number Segments.

From here you can mange the account segments on your site. If you already have account segments you can select them from the drop-down menu. If not, you will need to add a segment. Do this by pressing the “New” button and entering a name, this will identify it in the Account dialog on P&L report filter. You can include a description stating what this segment is for or how it is formatted. You have to decide how long all values for a given segment are going to be, you can choose between 1-8 alphanumeric characters (special characters are not allowed as segment values).

Next you add the values that you want this segment to have. The Segment Value is what will display as part of the account number and must be exactly the number of characters in the length field. You cannot have duplicate values for segment values.  The Description is what will appear in in drop down menus for this segment in the account dialog and P&L Report filter.

Once a segment is created, it must always have at least one segment value, the system will not allow you to delete the last value. If you attempt to delete a value that is currently being used on an account you be prompted to select which value to replace it with on those accounts. For example if you already had an account that was marked for value 04 – Miami, FL when you try to delete it the system will require you to choose another value, like 01 – Los Angeles, CA, to replace 04 with.

Finally on this page is the ordering settings you can decide what order the account segments will be displayed in, simply drag and drop them into the order you want. You can also change the separator, it can only be a single character. Below those setting a preview of what the account number will look like is displayed that dynamically updates to your changes.

When you save a new account segment for the first time you will asked to select a value to be used on all account that currently have account segments turned on. Once an account has segments turned on, each segment must always have a value, This dialog will set the initial value that you can then go and change as needed.

Turning on Account Segmentation for an Account

Once you have an account number segment you can add it to your income and expense accounts. To do this go to chart of accounts and open the account dialog by pressing the pencil icon on the far right of the table.

First you will need to check the “Enable Segmentation” box. When you do, boxes for the Segmented Account Number and the segments will appear. Select a value for each of the segments to take, their description will display in the dropdown and their value will display in the Segmented Account Number field.

After you save an close the account number column will display the Segmented Account Number on the Chart of Accounts. See below for an example of some accounts with and some without account segmentation enabled.

You can pick and chose which accounts you want to have or not have account segmentation enabled on, but once you enable it on an account it must have a value for each segment. So, it could be useful to have to have a natural value for accounts that you need to make as Red but are for all office areas for example.

The Profit and Loss Report

All of this was built in so that you can filter the P&L report more easily. When you got to edit the report’s filter you have the option to enable Number Segmentation and select to filter based on account segments. The logic for the selections is selecting multiple values within a segment are linked by OR statements, selected values from multiple segments are linked by AND statements. So in the example below, it will select all accounts that are for Dallas, TX AND either red OR Yellow.

Navigation Paths:

Account Number Segments: System Settings > Accounting > Account Number Segments

Account Dialog: (Default) Accounting > Chart of Accounts > Pencil Icon on the row of the account you want to edit

Profit and Loss Report: (Default) Reports > Accounting > P&L Report