Create nominal accounts for a new cost centre or department

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Open: Nominal > Create & Amend Nominal Accounts > Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department

How to

Create nominal accounts for a new cost centre

Open: Nominal > Create & Amend Nominal Accounts > Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department

  1. Choose to create a new Cost Centre from Generate for.

  2. Enter a Code and Name for the new cost centre.

  3. Choose the existing cost centre that you want to duplicate as the Source.

    The new cost centre is created for existing nominal accounts that have this Source cost centre.

    If you leave Source blank, the new cost centre is created for existing nominal accounts that have no cost centre code.

  4. To create the new cost centre and associated nominal accounts, select OK.

    Note: This may take some time depending on the number of nominal accounts being created.

Create nominal accounts for a new department

Open: Nominal > Create & Amend Nominal Accounts > Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department

  1. Choose to create a new Department from Generate for.

  2. Enter a Code and Name for the new department.

  3. Choose the existing department that you want to duplicate as the Source.

    The new department is created for existing nominal accounts that have this Source department.

    If you leave Source blank, the new department is created for existing nominal accounts that have no department code.

  4. To create the new department and associated nominal accounts, select OK.

    Note: This may take some time depending on the number of nominal accounts being created.

Create nominal accounts for a new cost centre and department

Open: Nominal > Create & Amend Nominal Accounts > Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department

  1. Choose to create a new Cost Centre and Department from Generate for.

  2. Enter a Code and Name for the new cost centre and department.

  3. Choose the existing cost centre and department that you want to duplicate as the Source.

    The new cost centre and department is created for existing nominal accounts that have this Source cost centre and department.

    If you leave Source blank, the new cost centre and department is created for existing nominal accounts that have no cost centre or department code.

  4. To create the new cost centre and department and associated nominal accounts, select OK.

    Note: This may take some time depending on the number of nominal accounts being created.


Useful info

About creating accounts for a new cost centre or department

Use Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department to quickly create a new cost centre or department and apply it to a range of existing nominal accounts at the same time. The new cost centre and department is created for existing nominal accounts that match the cost centre or department that you select. The new nominal accounts with their new cost centre or department combinations will have the same account and budget settings as the original nominal accounts.

Example

For example, you have a cost centre LON for your London location that you use with a range of nominal accounts. Now you want to add a new Manchester location with cost centre MAN to the same range of nominal accounts used for your LON cost centre. You can use Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department to create the new Manchester cost centre, and apply this to new nominal accounts copied from all existing accounts with the LON cost centre.

So if you used Create Accounts for Cost Centre and Department with the options:

  • Generate for: Cost Centre

  • Code: MAN

  • Name: Manchester

  • Source: LON

This would create a new cost centre MAN and apply it to all nominal accounts that already have the LON cost centre:

  • For the existing account 01100 LON ADM, a new account is created for 01100 MAN ADM.

  • For the existing account 01500 LON SAL, a new account is created for 01500 LON SAL.

Outcomes

  • The new cost centre or department is added to the list of cost centres or departments.

  • The new nominal accounts are created with your cost centre or department combinations.

    • The new nominal accounts will copy some properties from the original source accounts, such as the account settings and budget details.

    • The new nominal accounts will not copy other properties from the original source accounts, such as account balances, memos and attachments.

Using cost centres

You can use cost centres to segment parts of your business so that you can monitor income and expenses from individual areas in your company. You append a cost centre to profit and loss nominal accounts. Each nominal account has the same Code but different cost centres. For example, if you have several branch offices and you want to be able to produce a P & L for each office as well as one for the whole business, you could create a cost centre for each branch office. You then make sure that every profit and loss nominal account also using an account with the cost centre for each branch.

When you enter transactions, these are posted to the nominal account associated with this cost centre. When you produce your P & L, it reports the total of all accounts with the same code.

Tip: As all these nominal accounts are reporting the same thing, they should also have the same Report Category.

Cost centres are used to represent your funds. You'll need to select a cost centre (fund) for any nominal accounts that will be used to record the income and expenditure of your funds. This is likely to be the majority of your income and expense ( P & L) accounts. Most of your balance sheet nominal accounts will not need to be related to a fund, so these accounts don't need to have cost centres.

If you're an Academy, any nominal accounts linked to a cost centre with a fund type, and a SOFA category are included on the SOFA report.

Using departments

Departments are codes that you can add to profit and loss nominal accounts, to help keep track of your income and expenses.

Each nominal account has the same code but with different departments.

Departments are additional codes that you can add to profit and loss nominal accounts, to help keep track of your income and expenses in a particular area.

For example:

  • A primary school might set up a department for each year, from Nursery to Year 6.
  • A secondary school might set up a department for each teaching subject area, such as English, Mathematics and Art.

Each nominal account has the same code but with different departments.

Using report categories

Report categories are used to group your nominal accounts on your financial statements. Each category determines whether an account is for income or expenditure (Profit and Loss), or for your assets and liabilities (Balance sheet).

Every nominal account must have a report category, as this determines which report the balance of the account is included on and how it's reported.

Adding and amending report categories

When you first set up Sage 200, we provided a set of report categories for you to reflect the broad group of things required by most businessesschools. You can't change or delete these, but you can add additional ones of your own. (Settings > Cash Book / Nominal Accounts > Report Categories).

For maintained schools, these report categories match the CFR codes. For academies, these are categories common for most schools.

Tip: If you add your own report categories, make sure you also add them to your Financial Statement layouts (printed reports) and the Financial Statement Designer Excel reports).