Analytic Accounting

Getting the Right Tag Onto Every Line

Manual Distribution

On any transaction line that supports it (a sale order line, an invoice/bill line, an expense, a timesheet entry), open the Analytic Distribution widget and assign one analytic account per active plan, or split a single line across several accounts by percentage (e.g. 60% Marketing / 40% Sales for a shared cost).

Automatic Distribution Rules

Go to Accounting > Configuration > Analytic Distribution Models to define rules that pre-fill the distribution automatically based on conditions like:

• Partner or Partner Category – e.g. every bill from a specific vendor defaults to a specific cost center.
• Product or Product Category – e.g. every software subscription line defaults to "IT."
• Account – e.g. every line hitting a specific GL account gets a specific department by default.

Rules are evaluated in Sequence order, and the distribution can always still be overridden manually on a specific line — rules set the default, not a hard lock.

Where This Fills In Automatically Already

• A Project's tasks and timesheets tag their own project's analytic account automatically.
• A Sales Order line for a service tied to a project inherits that project's analytic account.
• Expenses tagged with a project/task carry that analytic account through to accounting.

Auto-Distribution Rules matter most for the transactions that don't already have an obvious home — general vendor bills, overhead expenses, and anything not tied to a specific project by nature.

A Second Way to Slice Every Transaction

Your Chart of Accounts answers what kind of transaction something is (Travel Expense, Product Revenue). Analytic Accounting answers a completely independent question — which part of the business it belongs to (which department, which project, which cost center, which product line) — without needing a separate GL account for every single department or project.

Core Concepts

Where You've Already Seen This

Every course that mentions "analytic account" — Projects (cost tracking), Timesheets (billable hours), Budgets (department/project budgets), Purchases and Expenses (cost allocation) — is using this same underlying system. This course covers the setup and reporting side directly.

Designing Your Dimensions

Creating a Plan

1. Go to Accounting > Configuration > Analytic Plans → Create.
2. Name it after the dimension it represents (e.g. "Departments," "Projects," "Cost Centers").
3. Plans can be nested (a parent plan with sub-plans) for hierarchical reporting, though most businesses keep plans flat and simple.
4. Set Default Applicability to control whether this plan is optional or required on relevant transaction lines.

Creating Analytic Accounts

Within a plan, go to Accounting > Configuration > Analytic Accounts → Create. Each one is a specific value under its plan (e.g. "Marketing" under the Departments plan, "Website Redesign" under the Projects plan — Projects created in the Projects app actually generate their analytic account automatically).

Designing Your Plans

• Keep plans genuinely independent — "Department" and "Project" are separate dimensions because a single project can involve people from several departments, and a department can work across several projects. Don't merge them into one plan.
• Don't create more plans than you'll actually use for reporting — every additional required plan adds a field someone has to fill in on every transaction.
• Archive analytic accounts you no longer use rather than deleting them, to preserve historical reporting.