Hi - I'm having a 'moment' and need some help please! How can I allocate payroll costs to 'projects' within Sage? There's no project number option on the journal entry, and the labour element makes up a big part of the costs per project which my client now wants to start reporting on.
His version of Sage accounts is the one with the projects option.
You post your PAYE journal as normal. Putting your gross wages where they need to go. So mine go to 6000
Rename 6001 (or unused code) to "project adjustments - this should always be NIL" (I like that little reminder!
Then you create a dummy bank account called "Project adjustments - this should always be NIL".
What you are going to do is create a bank payment, dated the same day as the payroll, or, as my client prefers, the date at which the wages are made up to, which is a few days before payroll is processed.
All lines get posted to 6001, and you can select the project and cost code and put in your value (all T9 of course.)
When you save that, it will show a negative balance on the dummy bank account, and a debit balance on 6001
To clear, you simply post a bank receipt to 6001 for the total amount, not selecting any projects and being sure its T9
I do this for labour and also van expenses (which is a fixed price per day to the customer) - it has absolutely no effect on VAT as its all T9. It has no effect on the PL (except you get a lovely long page when you print the nominal ledger!) And it doesn't affect the balance sheet.
I narrate my payment as "wages/project adj" and "van/project adj"
I narrate my receipt as "project adjs"
I will really have to start delegating some of the data entry on that particular client so enable me to do all the swishy project reporting that he wants!
Let me know if you need any further help. Because they are bank transactions, they are easy to correct if you make a mistake (just be aware if you are correcting after a VAT return has been reconciled, if its in the previous period)
Also, please add your first name to your signature! :)
I just enter my labour values from the payroll as resource charges within the project module. I prepare the import in excel as I already have the data on this format, and then import it. Although it is relatively easy to post them manually. All purchase and sales invoices are allocated to the relevant project but I do manually enter the closing stock for each project in the same way as labour. None of the postings within projects affect any of the actual nominal accounts. You can then run a projec t profit report for analysis. I do think it would be great if you could add project and cost codes to journal though.
Anne, thanks for your reply too. I've had a little 'play' and added a resource for labour, and I can now see the cost on the project profit report. Can I ask where the 'other' side of that transaction goes please? Or is there not one? In theory, if I can allocate as much labour cost as I like using the resource method, then the Project P & Ls will not necessarily add up to the total company P & L? I know I'm not making much sense!! I guess I just need to make sure I am allocating resources that equal the same value as my payroll journal?
Hi Victoria,
not been on here for a few days so apologies for the delay.
There is no double entry when posting resources in this way and these postings do not appear anywhere in the nominal transactions list so as far as I am aware they can't be edited. I believe project module is an analysis reporting tool only as it does not affect the nominal ledger. I do all of my reconciling in excel, and the transactions can be imported from excel which saves me a little time. I only analyse direct costs to keep an eye on the gross margins of each site/project we are working on, but you could if you wish allocate overheads in the same way.
