Analytic Accounting
This course covers Analytic Accounting in Quickenerp: plans and analytic accounts (cost centers, departments, projects), analytic distribution on transactions, auto-distribution rules, and analytic-based reporting used throughout Sales, Purchases, Projects, HR and Budgets.
| Responsible | System |
|---|---|
| Last Update | 07/21/2026 |
| Completion Time | 1 day 18 hours |
| Members | 1 |
Analytic Accounting Overview
View allGetting the Right Tag Onto Every Line
Manual Distribution
On any transaction line that supports it (a sale order line, an invoice/bill line, an expense, a timesheet entry), open the Analytic Distribution widget and assign one analytic account per active plan, or split a single line across several accounts by percentage (e.g. 60% Marketing / 40% Sales for a shared cost).
Automatic Distribution Rules
Go to Accounting > Configuration > Analytic Distribution Models to define rules that pre-fill the distribution automatically based on conditions like:
- Partner or Partner Category – e.g. every bill from a specific vendor defaults to a specific cost center.
- Product or Product Category – e.g. every software subscription line defaults to "IT."
- Account – e.g. every line hitting a specific GL account gets a specific department by default.
Rules are evaluated in Sequence order, and the distribution can always still be overridden manually on a specific line — rules set the default, not a hard lock.
Where This Fills In Automatically Already
- A Project's tasks and timesheets tag their own project's analytic account automatically.
- A Sales Order line for a service tied to a project inherits that project's analytic account.
- Expenses tagged with a project/task carry that analytic account through to accounting.
Auto-Distribution Rules matter most for the transactions that don't already have an obvious home — general vendor bills, overhead expenses, and anything not tied to a specific project by nature.
A Second Way to Slice Every Transaction
Your Chart of Accounts answers what kind of transaction something is (Travel Expense, Product Revenue). Analytic Accounting answers a completely independent question — which part of the business it belongs to (which department, which project, which cost center, which product line) — without needing a separate GL account for every single department or project.
Core Concepts
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Analytic Plan | A "dimension" of analysis — e.g. "Departments," "Projects," "Product Lines." You can have several plans active at once, each independent of the others. |
| Analytic Account | One specific value within a plan — e.g. "Marketing" and "Engineering" are both analytic accounts under the "Departments" plan. |
| Analytic Distribution | The actual tagging on a transaction line — which analytic account(s) it's assigned to, optionally split by percentage across several. |
| Analytic Line | A recorded entry against an analytic account — timesheets, expenses, and invoice/bill lines all generate these behind the scenes. |
Where You've Already Seen This
Every course that mentions "analytic account" — Projects (cost tracking), Timesheets (billable hours), Budgets (department/project budgets), Purchases and Expenses (cost allocation) — is using this same underlying system. This course covers the setup and reporting side directly.
Reading Cost/Revenue by Dimension
Analytic Account P&L
The Financial Reports course's "Analytic / Cost Center P&L" screen (Finance Insights) shows a full income statement re-cut by analytic account instead of by company-wide totals — see exactly how "Marketing" or "Project X" performed as if it were its own mini P&L.
Pivot & Group By
On the General Ledger, Budget, or Sales/Purchase Analysis reports, group by or filter on any analytic plan to slice the same underlying data by department, project, or cost center without needing a dedicated report for each dimension.
Consistency Is Everything
Analytic reporting is only as good as how consistently transactions are tagged. A single untagged vendor bill silently falls outside every department/project report while still counting in the company total — periodically run a filter for "Analytic Distribution is not set" on relevant journals to catch gaps before they distort a report.
Best Practices
- Set up Auto-Distribution Rules for your most common recurring vendors/products before going live — it saves far more manual tagging than fixing it after the fact.
- Review untagged transactions monthly as part of your close process.
- Keep the number of active, required plans manageable — every plan you require is one more thing every user must remember to fill in correctly.