How Do I Manage Sales Departments?

Departments allow you to produce a more detailed financial picture of your company. They can be used to break down a single general ledger account into several areas. By departmentalizing your revenue and costs, you are able to monitor your sales departments as profit centers. 

To enter a new department, head to the Company menu and click Enter Departments.  You may click Add New to create a new department, or double-click on an existing department to edit it.

The Department field is a two-digit number used for identifying the department in various screens and reports.  

The Description field should be used to name the department.  This helps you to tell the departments apart and know what area of your business the department represents. 

In the Income Account field, you'll select an account from your Chart of Accounts to tie the revenue of your invoices to.  Billing Codes and Inventory Items in ESC have fields where an Income Account can be assigned directly to that item; so the revenue for that item always goes to that general ledger account.  However, leaving the Income Account field blank on those items will mean that the revenue they generate will be sent to the general ledger account assigned to the invoice's Department.  If you have multiple income accounts in your chart of accounts, you may wish to create a Department for each one to help classify your income.

The Division field is only available if you have ESC Accounting enabled.  This field allows you to provide additional detail on your financial statements.  For instance, if you provide service in more than one state, you may wish to use the Division field to specify which state the income for this department belongs to.

If you check the Set as Default Department box, the department you are editing will now be the default.  The default department is the first to be assigned to invoices.

Once Departments have been created, they can be used on invoices to categorize the sales data from the invoice.  They are also a great way to break down sales reports to find where your company is performing at its best.