This feature provides a different way of reporting and viewing revenue whereby estimate lines, purchase costs and revenue can be analysed by department. This then removes the need to create departmental phases in order to achieve your departmental analysis, freeing phases up to be created to represent deliverables or stages within a job.
NB - Switching from using phases to represent departments to using phases to represent deliverables or stages is a major re-engineering of your data structure. You should consider with care how to implement these changes before starting this project. Feel free to contact support if you feel you need any guidance or assistance with this (support@synergist.co.uk). Also note that this feature is available on Professional and Enterprise pricing tiers only.
Departmental Analysis can be evaluated at job and phase level, the phases within a job are freed of their requirement to represent all the financials for a department, so now estimates, costs and revenue from any / all departments can exist on every phase.
Before any revenue is recognised on a job or phase, the job or phase must be complete, at least as far as estimating is concerned. Posting values to your sales analysis codes must be done once the Departmental Analysis split is finalised, otherwise you will run the risk of posting revenue to sales codes using a different percentage split between departments from one invoice / RR to the next. As such if you are using revenue recognition you will have to defer all revenue until estimating is finalised, if you are not using revenue recognition you can only commence invoicing once estimating is finalised.
The feature is controlled by a switch in company settings. Go to Company Settings > Switches > Estimating panel:
Next set up your departments in File Maintenance > Types > Departments
Setup
There is no need to populate a cost rate, that is not required for this feature. You may be using departmental costs, they are part of the costs hierarchy in Synergist. You should assign sales and purchase nominal codes to all your departments, these will be used by the nominal code builder to analyse invoices (see further down in this article).
Once your departments are created they must be assigned to charge codes, materials and suppliers:
You can leave the department blank on items that you simply wish to spread to all departments using the same job level percentage split. So if a job is fully estimated and 75% of the recommended charge is for charge codes in the Design department and 25% is in the Digital department, any cost / revenue generated by charge codes with no department will be split between Design and Digital in the same 75 / 25 ratio.
Usage
Create your jobs using phases as you wish rather than using phases as departments.
The estimate tab on job and phase has a view option to display the Departmental Analysis:
Job level
Each phase departmental breakdown is shown with an overall job summary panel at the bottom.
Phase level
By adding up each estimate line recommended charge department by department, a percentage split based on job / phase total estimated recommended charge is created by department. Any estimate lines that are not linked to a department are included in the total estimated recommended charge, and the estimated recommended charge of these "no department" lines are allocated to departments according to the percentage split already calculated.
Sales invoicing
A new element has been added to the nominal code builder for sales invoices - Department:
The analysis tab on your sales invoices will now automatically split invoiced / recognised amounts based on the departmental split. As previously mentioned you should not invoice / recognise anything until you are satisfied that all estimating is complete and that the departmental split is correct.
Purchase invoicing
Similarly, purchase orders will be allocated to departments, so a new purchase invoice builder element has been added for department. A purchase invoice with several purchase orders allocated to it will be automatically analysed using a department split based on the departments linked to allocated purchase orders. Invoices with a single order allocated will obviously be 100% analysed to the purchase code linked to the department on the purchase order.
Reporting
The Period Profit report supports a departmental analysis. You can also use a department filter in this report to select a department or departments to report in isolation.
Data Analytics also supports summarising relevant data by department. These are views of time estimated cost showing departmental split by client:
Department added as a row:
Department added as a column: