Expense Reports
Expense Reports show you where your company's money is going, without having to put it together by hand. AdmCloud treats as "expense" the local net amount posted to Expense and Non-Operating Expense ledger accounts (accounts whose class starts with 6, 8 or 9), no matter which transaction generated it — vendor bills, Expenses, Journal Entries, payroll, and so on. There are two report families: Month and Comparative (by ledger account), and the profit center reports (grouped by Division, Department, Location or Item Class).
What are they and what are they for?
- Monthly Charges: each ledger account's expense, month by month, across a year. It's the fastest way to see an account's trend over time.
- Comparative Costs: compares each ledger account's expense between any two date ranges (they don't have to be full months), with the difference and the percentage of variation between them.
- Profit center reports: instead of grouping by ledger account, these group a date range's expense by Division, Department, Location or Item Class, so you can see which branch, project or business line is spending the most.
On the profit center reports, expenses that don't have that dimension assigned (for example, a vendor bill with no Department set) show up grouped in their own row, so the report's total always matches the period's real total expense.
How to use it
- Open the report you need from the Accounting Reports menu: Monthly Charges, Comparative Costs, or the profit center report your company has enabled.
- On Monthly Charges, set the Year (defaults to the current one) and, to narrow the result, the Account, Subsidiary, Location, Department, Division, Item Class or Project. Uncheck Only With Amounts if you also want to see accounts with no activity.
- On Comparative Costs, set the two Date Ranges you want to compare (Period 1 and Period 2) and, optionally, the same dimension filters.
- On the profit center reports, set the Date Range (required) and, if you need to narrow the result, the other dimension filters and Project.
- If your company has more than one dimension enabled as a profit center, use the variant bar at the top of the report to switch between By Division, By Department, By Location and By Item Class without losing the filters you already applied.
- From the results grid you can export, print, reorder columns or save your own report layout, just like any other AdmCloud report. The account or dimension name is a direct link to its record.
Main capabilities
- The expense figure is built from any transaction that posts to an Expense or Non-Operating Expense ledger account — it isn't limited to a single document type.
- Monthly Charges shows one column for each of the 12 months of the chosen year, plus the account's yearly total.
- Comparative Costs shows each account's amount in both periods, the difference between them and the percentage of variation.
- The profit center reports show a single expense total per dimension (Division, Department, Location or Item Class) for the whole chosen date range.
- Quick switching between the profit center variants available to your company, without re-entering your filters.
- The Month and Comparative reports also accept a Tag filter and carry a hidden Document Type filter, which normally only activates when you arrive from a link on another screen.
Key fields — Monthly Charges and Comparative Costs
| Field | What it's used for |
|---|---|
| Code / Account | Code and name of the Expense ledger account; the name is a direct link to its record on the Chart of Accounts. |
| January … December | Monthly Charges only: that account's expense for each month of the queried year. |
| Period 1 / Period 2 | Comparative Costs only: that account's total expense in each of the two date ranges you set. |
| Difference | Comparative Costs only: Period 2 minus Period 1. |
| Variation | Comparative Costs only: the percentage of change between both periods. |
| Total | On Monthly Charges: the sum of the 12 months for that account; also totaled at the bottom of the report. |
Key fields — Profit center reports
| Field | What it's used for |
|---|---|
| Division / Department / Location / Item Class | Name of the dimension the expense was grouped by; it's a direct link to that Division, Department, Location or Item Class record. |
| Amount | Total expense accumulated for that dimension over the entire chosen date range. |
Available filters
- Year (required on Monthly Charges) or Date Range (required on Comparative Costs and on the profit center reports).
- Account, available only on Monthly Charges and Comparative Costs.
- Subsidiary, if your company has it enabled.
- Location, Department, Division, Item Class and Project, to narrow the report down to one of those dimensions; each dimension filter also automatically includes its child dimensions.
- Only With Amounts, on Monthly Charges, to hide accounts with no activity for the year.
- Tag and Document Type, on Monthly Charges and Comparative Costs; the second one normally stays hidden and only activates when you arrive from a link on another report.
Availability and permissions
- Every report in this area requires the "Chart of Accounts" permission of Accounting on your user group.
- The Item Class report is available from the Standard plan onward.
- The Division, Department and Location reports require the Premium plan or higher.
- On the Enterprise edition, all four profit center variants depend on your company having the Core module enabled.
- If your company doesn't have any of the four dimensions enabled as a profit center, the screen shows the "not available on this edition" message instead of the report.
- The Subsidiary filter only shows up if your company has subsidiaries enabled.
Tips and common mistakes
"I opened the Item Class report and it took me to a different report". If your company doesn't have Item Class enabled as a profit center but does have one of the other three (Location, Department or Division), AdmCloud automatically redirects you to the first of those reports that's available.
Use Monthly Charges when you need to see an account's trend across the year, Comparative Costs when you want to compare two specific date ranges (for example, this quarter against the previous one), and the profit center reports when what you need to know is which branch, department or project is spending the most, rather than which ledger account.
These reports are read-only: they don't change or record any transaction. The expense figure is always calculated from the local net amount already posted, so any correction you make on the source document (a vendor bill, an Expense, a Journal Entry) is reflected here automatically.