Here’s a problem we at Plus & Minus solved for a company that needed to record and report on what amounts to 4 dimensions of financial reporting. The company presently uses Great Plains accounting software (which was sold to Microsoft and is now known as Microsoft Dynamics). Despite their efforts, they couldn’t extract these data points from Microsoft Dynamics. Evidently, MS Dynamics can’t do what Plus & Minus can, nor can they provide a live demo like Plus & Minus did to win the trust of this client.

Here’s the blueprint:

  • A corporate company that doesn’t generate any revenue
  • 6 subsidiary companies
  • 5 locations
  • 3 types of revenues
  • 11 levels of workers

Mathematically, this works out to 990 different reports possible for just the revenues of this organization. We use the same logic for their expenses and payroll so management can get a complete financial autopsy of where their money came from and went.

Management wants a report that shows:

  • Total revenue for each company
  • Total revenue for each location
  • Total revenue for each type of revenue
  • Total revenue for each level of worker

This means that for each type of revenue, there can be 11 levels of workers generating 3 types of revenues at 5 different locations for 6 different companies. While generating a report on all these combinations is an unlikely scenario, the important thing is that Plus & Minus can handle this type of recording and reporting.

Here’s how Plus & Minus handles the recording process:

  • The General Ledger account for the revenues will be 610
  • Every General Ledger account supports 999,999,999,999 sub-accounts

This is how we distribute the sub-accounts:

  • We don’t care about the first 4 digits of the sub-account; they could be any logical set of numbers
  • Digits 5 and 6 are the level of worker
  • Digits 7 and 8 are the type of revenue
  • Digits 9 and 10 are the locations
  • Digits 11 and 12 are for the companies

Please note how each category takes 2 digits, allowing for up to 99 companies, 99 locations, 99 types of revenue, and 99 levels of workers. This allows for significant expansion.

Because Plus & Minus has a complete chart of account independence, management can use the ‘account selector function,’ which allows the user to select specific digits within the General Ledger account and the sub-accounts to produce reports showing the amounts in those selected digits.

If management wants to know the amount of revenue generated by Level 9 employees doing 3 types of work at the 4th location in company 2, the report would show: The General Ledger account 610 is for revenues with the sub-account: XXXX09030402. If management wanted to see all the revenues for all levels of employees doing 3 types of work at the 4th location in company 2, then all the amounts in the 5th and 6th digits would be accumulated, and that total amount would show in the report.

This same sub-account structure can be used for the direct expense portion of the income statement and the payroll accounts, allowing for very detailed reporting on where the payroll expense is incurred.

Although some people may view this scenario as extreme reporting and very intensive, all these data points are collected because management needs to know how to steer the ship. To me, it’s like getting clean silverware and dishes from the dishwasher: someone had to load the dirty dishes.