• From: Canada, QC, Montreal
  • Registered: 05/16/2010
  • Posts: 167

Topic: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

First let's say that I like working with FA. It is easy to handle it, and it is getting better and better.

But my main goal when I made the choice of FA was to track my costs by activities (or projects). We have a small association regrouping IT managers and there is many activities going on: Administrators Board, Web support, regional sub-groups activities, 2010 Annual meeting, 2011 Annual meeting, Members training activities, Membership 2010, Membership 2011, etc. Therefore I setup Dimensions to do that. That helps to keep the GL account smaller.

For example people working on the organisation of the 2011 Annual meeting will charge the travel expenses at the specific GL account, but also the the 2011 Annual Meeting Dimension. All expenses and sales (registrations) would also be charged to that Dimension. Eventually I had in my mind that I could see either a detailed or a summary revenues/expenses report organized by Dimension, ideally for a specific period.

I have to say that I'm a little bit confused now that I am at the point where I want to get the information out of the system in order to meet with the official accountant on next Monday. For example I had sent Direct Invoices to all members for 2011 Membership. All invoices were done with Dimension "Membership 2011", and all payments completed. But I have no trace of "Membership 2011" in my reports, and it seems that there is no trace of that dimension in the GL_trans table. Obviously, some transactions get attached with Dimensions because there is data in the report (there are traces of the Dimension field in at least 3 tables; are they used ?).

By the way, I thought at first that the report was not working, but in fact it seems to depend on the first chosen and the last chosen Dimension. I'm not sure of what the program does in the background with these choices within an alphabetic order list. Sometimes it lists no Dimension, sometimes 4, sometimes 8..., with no direct relation with the number of dimension chosen.

Am I beside the track ?

Thanks for helping me to better understand.

Gaston

2 Reply by huotg01 (edited by huotg01 07/16/2011 10:22:06 pm)

  • From: Canada, QC, Montreal
  • Registered: 05/16/2010
  • Posts: 167

Re: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

Let's suppose:

Dimension name: Acting ; id: 3; reference: "Acting"
Dimension name: Training ; id: 1; reference: "Training"
Dimension name: Cleaning ; id 2; reference: "Cleaning"

When preparing the report, the Dimensions will be listed in alphabetic order:
-Acting
-Cleaning
-Training

Therefore, because I want all Dimensions, I will choose the first one as "from" and the last one as "to". I will then point "Acting" in "from" field, and "Training" as "to" field, am I ok to say that FA will just report "Acting", because it is going to be from "3" to "1" ?
Code is:
function getTransactions($from, $to)
{
    $sql = "SELECT *
        FROM
            ".TB_PREF."dimensions
        WHERE id >= ".db_escape($from)."
        AND id <= ".db_escape($to)."
        ORDER BY
            reference";

    return db_query($sql,"No transactions were returned");
}

For comments,

Thanks

Gaston
ps: I confirm the hypothesis. I went to the backend, look at what was the record with ID= 1 and which one with ID=21 (the last), choose the two Dimensions in the FROM and TO fields, and I got all Dimensions listed.

  • joe
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 03/15/2007
  • Posts: 5,107

Re: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

When dealing with dimensions on Invoices, it is the Sales account and Purchase accounts that are involved. You can follow the dimension result by taking a Rport Profit and Loss Statement for a dimension. And of course you can select the period as long as you wish.

/Joe

  • From: Canada, QC, Montreal
  • Registered: 05/16/2010
  • Posts: 167

Re: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

Thanks Joe for taking the time to answer.

In fact you probably overlooked the main point in this thread. That point is that the way used by the program to define the dimension "area" covered by the summary report sometimes works, sometimes doesn't works. Please read my post carefully. The explanation is also there.

This problem also causes the fact that I had no report at first (other thread), and explains how a user can go around the problem by going to the backend to see the IDs for every Dimension (which is neither easy or normal) and select  the "FROM" and the "TO" accordingly.

Thanks

Gaston

  • joe
  • Administrator
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  • Registered: 03/15/2007
  • Posts: 5,107

Re: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

You can only print info for one dimension at a time. If you want to print for several dimensions, then consider using 2 levels of dimensions, where the first level would be of type f.i. department and level two would no selections.

/Joe

  • From: Canada, QC, Montreal
  • Registered: 05/16/2010
  • Posts: 167

Re: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

Joe

I was just telling you that there is a problem with the panel used to define the "from" and the "to" (first Dimension and last Dimension).used for the Summary Report. Please read again the actual thread.

Gaston

  • joe
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • Registered: 03/15/2007
  • Posts: 5,107

Re: Dimension for keeping track of activities (or project) costs

If you want to make your own report with several dimensions, remember that the dimensions in the listboxes are sorted by reference, not id.
BTW, the dimensions in the debtor_trans table are not used and are there by mistake.

Joe