Yet another Class Question

[Ifarm2]

This is how I have our classes set up

Farm
Landlord Name #1
Corn
2010
2009
Soybeans
2010
2009
Landlord Name #2
Corn
2010
2009
Soybeans
2010
2009.... etc . Doing this for 8 different landlords

FSA Direct payments issues the first percentage of payments WITHOUT information as to what grain the payments are for.

So here is my question. Do I just assign this the Landlord Name #1 Class and no further subclass? The same thing will happen with CRP payments. I was wondering what the P & L will look like if I don't assign all the way down to the lower subclass.

Thank you for your help (and patience).

[FlagshipTech]

> Do I just assign this the Landlord Name #1 Class and no further subclass?

Generally, yes.

The usual approach is to assign income and expenses to "overhead" classes that are as close as possible to the ultimate profit or cost center class(es) you'd like to management information about. Then at the end of the year or whenever you have better information, you can go back and allocate reasonable portions of those incomes or expenses to specific profit or cost centers.

Entering QuickBooks transactions to allocate overhead classes to other classes can be messy and a lot of work to get right. But the result is that your QuickBooks reports for particular classes will include all the desired allocations from other (overhead) classes.

One alternative is to get income and expense totals for your overhead classes (like Landlord Name #1) from QuickBooks reports, and also for your various profit and cost center classes, and assign (allocate) overheads in a spreadsheet. That may actually be simplest, so long as you're just doing it annually. Texas A&M University had (may still have) some Excel spreadsheets available for doing this kind of thing with QuickBooks.

One of our long-run goals for our ManagePLUS for QuickBooks software (http://www.goflagship.com/products/mphome.htm) is to support doing allocations in ManagePLUS so no transaction entries are involved. But that's a long way off yet.

Mark Wilsdorf
Flagship Technologies, Inc.
QuickBooks™ Add-Ons and Solutions You Can Use
http://www.goflagship.com

NOTE: Parts of this message were dictated through speech-to-text software, which can sometimes interpret words or phrases incorrectly. If any part of this message is unclear or appears incorrect, please ask for clarification.