Multiple Categories
JewPaltz
Member Posts: 2
B"H
Is there a way to add multiple categories/tags/accounts to a transaction?
My main use-case is tracking departments or individuals that spent the money or project that the expense was associated with.
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Hi, @JewPaltz.
It isn't possible, as that would create duplicate entries in your reports. There's been a bit of discussion on the Community recently on the subject of sub-accounts, which might be what you're looking for. A feature like that would allow you to break down accounts into sub-categories, which would allow you to bring up reports for both parent accounts (say, "Expense - Meals and Entertainment") and individual child accounts nested within ("Expense - Meals and Entertainment - Charles"). Is this close to what you have in mind?
Your best option right now would be to create new expense accounts on your Chart of Accounts specific to departments, individuals or projects to keep track of those numbers independently.
sub-accounts is one (limited) way to deal with it. That would be a partial solution if/when it is implemented. Currently, having multiple accounts for one expense does not allow for proper reporting. We would need all of the money spent on computer supplies reported under one line in one report (lets say a P/L) and all of the money spent for a particular office on one line in a different report (lets say a cash-flow). Once sub-accounts are implemented we could get one of those, but not both.
Quicken/Quickbooks uses a second field 'Tags' to fill this requirement.
Hi, @JewPaltz.
We do use vendor and customer tags for transactions already. You could treat departments or individuals as vendors to be able to track that information using the Purchases by Vendor report. This would make it impossible to track your purchases by actual vendors, but if departmental/personal expenses make for more useful insight, it might be a worthwhile workaround.
With that said, I'll absolutely forward your feedback. Thank you for taking the time to share!