Accounts vs Projects

Janet Marcel

I am new to Financial Edge. Our “accounts” have already been set up as “projects.” What is the difference between the two and is that the best way to use these?

Kevin Brazell

@Janet Marcel
we may need more context on what your system is setup as to fully answer. But at it's core the accounts in FE are your foundational level of tracking and reporting on data. Projects are a separate way to track data, but it' snot tied to your actual account number / string. As an example rather than making 50 of a similar expense code like salary expense. You could have 1, and use FE's project that can track other items with the single account. This way your actuall COA is smaller and the projects are there to track , and report on individually vs having a large COA for accounts that keep covering more and more, evenutally leading to a bloated COA. Just one example but that's the idea. You can budge by projects too, so you can combine projects and accounts for budgets and then break it out account level, project level etc.

Karen Edwards

@Janet Marcel We use accounts in our account string. Our string is company-cost center-account - ex 01-2400-624. In our case, company is a substitute for fund. The account number 624 is called Staff Salaries and is used across cost centers. We use projects as a way to track literal projects, such as a remodelling project, or possibly to track expenditures for a particular funding stream.