Definition
Analytical accounting is a parallel accounting layer. It allocates revenues and expenses across business dimensions such as departments, projects or regions. Ledger accounts define the accounting nature of a transaction (e.g. “Rent expense”). Analytical accounting defines its business context (e.g. “Marketing team”). An analytic plan (also called a dimension or axis) is one of these dimensions, such as Department or Project. Each plan contains analytic accounts, the values of the dimension (e.g. Sales, HR, Marketing).Purpose
- Break down costs and revenues beyond the chart of accounts.
- Track performance by business unit without changing the general ledger.
Structure
Each analytic plan has:- An identifier (
id) - A name (
name) - An active flag (
active) - A parent plan (
parent_id), when the accounting software supports a hierarchy of plans
Relationships
- A plan contains analytic accounts. In multiple plans mode, each analytic account references its plan with
analytic_plan. - Invoice lines and journal entry lines reference a plan with
analytic_distribution.analytic_plan, the identifier of the plan. - Depending on the connector, a folder uses one plan or several plans. See Single and multiple analytic plans.
API endpoints
- Get analytic plans: list the analytic plans.