What are trading accounts?
Trading accounts are a way of separating profit and loss items into a separate reporting section. This is primarily used for sales trading and livestock trading. Trading accounts are set up on a per entity file basis.
There are three steps in the process of creating a trading account report:
- Creating a trading account classification (see below)
- Allocating an account to a trading account classification (see below)
- Producing a report with separate trading account report settings (see the knowledge articles: Reporting - Creating a Report and Reporting - Pages).
You can also use divisions in a similar way, for a comparison between the two, refer to the table below:
| Feature | Divisions | Trading Accounts |
|---|---|---|
| Tag Accounts |  | |
| Tag Transactions | | |
| Filter Report Columns | | |
| Seperate Profit and Loss Pages | | |
| Primary Production | |
1. Creating a trading account classification
To create a new trading account navigate to 'Trading Accounts', from the File Settings menu, from any screen within the client file as shown below:
You will be directed to a screen with a list of all available trading accounts. To create a new one, select +New Trading Account.
You will need to give the trading account both a Code and a Name. You can then select the Profit and Loss Location. There are three options; Income, Other Income or None. This will determine where the summary will appear on the Profit and Loss. You can also choose to select an alternative Page Title for the trading account report. By default, if the field is left blank the Page Title will just be the name of the trading account. If the 'Primary Production' checkbox is ticked, another checkbox will appear for you to indicate whether the trading account is also a 'Livestock' account.
Finally, click the Add Trading Account button in order to add the trading account to the client file.
Note: Nominating a trading account as 'Livestock' will allow you to use the primary production calculator for that particular trading account. For more information see the knowledge article: Datasets - Other Info - Primary Production.
2. Allocating an account to a trading account classification
To allocate an account to a trading account, navigate to the accounts screen and edit an account by selecting the edit button to the right as shown below:
On the account edit screen, select the required Default Trading Account from the dropdown list.
Note: There are two options, you can either select the default behaviour of the account or select the behaviour of a single account. This is useful for sub-accounts or linked accounts that may have different properties.
Note: An account can be added to both a Division and a Trading Account. This allows you the most flexibility when reporting. For more information on divisions see the knowledge article: Accounts - Divisions.
After editing the account select the Save Account button, the account has now been allocated to that trading account for the purpose of reporting.
Divisional and trading account view
To allocate multiple accounts to trading accounts quickly you can use the 'Divisional and Trading Accounts' view in the Accounts screen. From here you can select the relevant trading account from the dropdown menu to the right of the account.
Note: Any new source account that is linked to an account with an exisiting default trading account, will be automatically allocated to that default trading account. To override this, simply edit the new account.
Next article: Accounts - Opening Balances