Weekly Dynamic: Backwards Allocation Accounts in Dynamics GP

We’ve covered Fixed Allocation accounts here before but I’ve got a new use for them now. Typically a Fixed Allocation account takes an amount posted to that account and passes it to multiple other accounts based on the setup percentages. Recently I ran into a situation where we wanted to do the opposite.

In Project Accounting you can force transactions to change various segments to match the segment values assigned to the project using the subnet mask functionality. For example, a department segment is changed on posting to match the department assigned to the project. It works great until you run into a particular cost category that you DON’T want to change based on the project. You can’t control subnet masks by cost category, an account type either gets a mask or it doesn’t. In our case, for certain allocation transactions to a particular cost category, we wanted them all to hit the same department but Project Accounting was transforming the department segment causing us problems.

The solution was to create a Fixed Allocation account for each department. The allocation accounts all pointed to the same real GL account with a 100% allocation. In other words, instead of using an allocation account to spread costs to multiple departments, we used multiple allocation accounts to rollup costs to a single department. This kept the GL clean and avoided polluting the chart with a whole bunch of accounts since allocation accounts are pass through accounts that don’t show up on financial statements.

I love finding new uses for old features!