Accounting Facilities

This help file applies to an out-of-date version of MainBoss.
The most recent version of MainBoss is MainBoss 4.2.4.
For the latest version of this help file can be found here.

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MainBoss lets you keep track of various types of costs: the amount you pay for equipment, materials, outside contractors, etc., and the amount you charge for your maintenance department's work.

Note: MainBoss is not a full-fledged accounting package. However, it does keep track of the transactions needed by such a package. This information can be exported for use with an accounting package.

MainBoss's accounting facilities are intended to simplify day-to-day operations, so that workers using MainBoss don't have to know which ledger account is used for which expenses. In order to make this possible, someone familiar with your organization's accounting practices must set up a number of definitions that workers can then use.

For advice on how to set up MainBoss's accounting facilities, see the Configuration guide. The description here is only an overview of the basic concepts.

MainBoss's accounting facilities generate a reliable audit trail of accounting records based on your general ledger accounts. However, there is currently no direct method for using these records in conjunction with any accounting software package. You will have to export the information from MainBoss and process it into a format acceptable to your accounting package.

The Accounting Module: If you have licensed the MainBoss Accounting module, you will have access to various special facilities for tracking accounting information:

As an example, suppose that a property management company creates two separate general ledger accounts for each tenant: one for labor expenses and one for material expenses. This might lead you to set up the following cost centers:

   Cost Centers      Ledger Account
TenantA Labor             00001
TenantA Materials         00002
TenantB Labor             00003
TenantB Materials         00004
TenantC Labor             00005
TenantC Materials         00006

For each tenant, you create an expense model: TenantA Model, TenantB Model, TenantC Model. The TenantA Model would contain the following expense categories:

Category         Associated Cost Center
 Labor              TenantA Labor
 Materials          TenantB Materials

TenantB Model and TenantC Model would be similar.

Whenever you create a work order, you have to assign it an expense model. Suppose you're doing a job for Tenant A. You look at your list of expense models and see that there is one especially associated with Tenant A; you therefore assign that expense model to the work order.

Next you have to assign an expense category to each expense on the work order. When you look at the list of categories associated with TenantA Model, you see there are only two: Labor and Materials. Therefore, you just have to assign one of those two categories to each expense on the work order. This also associates a cost center with each expense, and therefore a general ledger account. Note, however, that when you fill out the work order, you only have to make two types of decisions:

Default Accounts: The MainBoss accounting facilities let you separate out expenses in a sophisticated way (e.g. if you keep separate accounts for each tenant). If your needs are more simple, MainBoss has default expense models and expense categories that you can use, with or without modification.

If you don't need accounting at all, just use the default expense model for all work orders. Choose the default expense categories for every item on the work order.

Whenever you create a work order, you must specify an expense model. If you haven't set up your own expense models, use the default model.

Similarly, whenever you add an item to a work order, you must specify an expense category. If you haven't set up your own categories, use the default ones.

Displaying Accounting Records: To display the accounting records that MainBoss creates, you use Administration | Accounting. For more information, see Accounting Records.

See Also:

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