How to use Dynamics GP Unit Accounts to enhance your management reports

Many Dynamics GP clients use statistical data in combination with financial information to create key metrics that management uses to track the performance of a company.  What many people don’t realize is that you can utilize Unit Accounts in GP to add metrics to existing financial reports.

What are Unit Accounts? Unit Accounts are like Posting Accounts except that they are for non-financial or statistical data. Instead of currency, they track units.

For example, a company might use Revenue per Headcount to measure the efficiency and productivity of its employees. Unit Accounts for headcount by department would need to be set up in the Unit Account Maintenance window (Financial>Cards>Unit Accounts.)

Tip: It is best to select all series when you create the Unit Account. It can be difficult to add one later if you decide you need it.

Once Unit Accounts are set up, they can be used for reporting in Management Reporter or FRx. In our example, the calculation Revenue / Headcount could be added to the Income Statement so it would show Revenue per Headcount for each department.

Budget information can also be added for Unit Accounts. This would allow a company to report on variances just like posting accounts. A company can track headcount by department and not only report revenue by Headcount but also compare it to their budget.

Other examples of Unit Accounts would be number of units sold, number of calls received or resolved for a call center, number of attendees at a seminar, number of claims per month, or Voluntary/Involuntary Employee Terminations, which could be used with Total Headcount to report Turnover. Any data that is tracked and reported on could potentially be set up as a Unit Account.

Unit Accounts by default act like Balance Sheet Accounts. During the Year-End close process, the balance is brought forward to the New Year. This could cause an issue if you did not want to start the year with a balance. For instance, if you were tracking number of units sold, you would not want to start the New Year with the ending balance of the previous year. A new enhancement in GP 2013 allows the user to mark if a Unit Account balance should be cleared at Year-End or not. For versions prior to GP 2013, a SQL script would need to be run to clear the beginning balances in the tables.