Rules Governing Reporting Units

Reporting units are not part of the account number. They are used to group financial data along with the account number.

These built-in features of reporting units are designed to add flexibility in reporting:

  • Unit Code 1 is predefined as tied to the department code. Payroll uses this field when reporting hours. If Unit Code 1 is defined, it must be tied to a valid department number. To make this connection on the Departments form, fill in the Unit Code 1 value for each department you want.
  • Unit Code 2 represents the product code, and, if defined, must be tied to a valid product code. As inventory related transactions are produced, the transactions are automatically updated with the value that appears in Unit Code 2 on the Product Codes form for that item.
  • Unit Code 3 and Unit Code 4 are user-defined. They can carry any valid Unit Code that has been defined on the appropriate Unit Code form. For example, you could use them for Work Center or Work Cell, or for a cost center that is grouped differently than what is defined as Department in Unit Code 1. You could use these for reporting on different currency codes, vendor statistics or customer statistics. Use these anywhere in the system you might ordinarily have split out information by subaccount.
    Note:  You can use the same Unit Code for more than one reporting unit, although the codes would not necessarily mean the same thing. For example, a Unit Code named ABCD could be set up for both reporting Unit 3 and reporting Unit 4, because each Unit Code is a separate table.
  • On the Chart of Accounts form, you can set each Unit Code with one of three attributes:
    • Not Accessible: The Reporting Unit field is not accessible for this account in the system. If this option is selected, the unit code is not posted.
    • Accessible: The Reporting Unit field is accessible for this account everywhere in the system. If this option is selected, you may enter that unit code for the associated account, but it is not mandatory.
    • Required: The Reporting Unit field is required for this account everywhere in the system. If this option is selected, you must enter the unit code for the associated account. An error occurs if you leave the unit code blank when one is required. If no unit code is entered, posting fails.
  • Areas of the system that provide default account numbers also allow the entry of reporting units to be used as defaults. In places where the default account numbers can be overwritten, so can the reporting units.