Class & Location Tracking

Break your financials down by department, cost center, or office branch. Tag transactions, invoices, and bills so BizBooks Pro can generate a separate Profit & Loss for each segment of your business.

What Class & Location Tracking Does

Most accounting software gives you one set of financial reports for your entire company. That works fine when you run a single-location, single-product business. But if you operate across multiple offices, serve distinct market segments, or want to measure profitability by department, one combined report is not enough.

Class tracking lets you define logical groupings for your revenue and expenses. Common uses include:

• Business divisions or product lines (Consulting, Software, Hardware)
• Departments or cost centers (Sales, Operations, Marketing, Admin)
• Service categories or revenue streams
• Ownership structures (e.g., properties in a real estate portfolio)

Location tracking adds a physical or organizational dimension on top of classes. You might tag every transaction with both the department and the office it originated from, then run a P&L filtered by either dimension or both at once.

Once enabled, class and location fields appear throughout BizBooks Pro wherever money is recorded — journal entries, customer payments, invoices, bills, and expense transactions. The tagging takes seconds, and the reporting payoff is a detailed picture of which parts of your operation are profitable and which are not.

Turning the Feature On

Class and location tracking are off by default. Each company in BizBooks Pro has its own setting, so you can enable it for one entity without affecting others.

1. Open Settings from the left sidebar.
2. Select Company Settings.
3. Scroll to the Advanced Features section.
4. Toggle on Class Tracking, Location Tracking, or both.
5. Click Save Settings.

After saving, a new Classes & Locations menu item appears in the sidebar under the Accounting section. Existing transactions are not affected. Going forward, every new transaction, invoice, and bill will include optional class and location fields.

Setting Up Classes

Classes represent the logical segments you want to track, such as departments, service lines, or revenue categories. Plan your class structure before creating them — changing it later means re-tagging historical transactions.

To create a class:

1. Navigate to Settings → Classes & Locations (or the sidebar link if visible).
2. Click the Classes tab.
3. Click Add Class.
4. Enter a name and an optional description.
5. Click Save.

Repeat for each segment you want to track. You can also mark a class as inactive rather than deleting it if it is no longer in use — inactive classes are hidden from transaction forms but their historical data is preserved in reports.

Sub-Classes

BizBooks Pro supports one level of sub-classes, which is useful when a broad class has meaningful subdivisions. For example:

• Consulting
  • Strategy
  • Implementation
  • Training

Create a sub-class by selecting a parent class in the Parent Class field when adding or editing a class. Reports can be grouped at the parent level or expanded to show each sub-class individually.

Setting Up Locations

Locations are used to distinguish between physical offices, retail branches, warehouses, or any other geographic or organizational unit that needs separate financial visibility.

To add a location:

1. Go to Settings → Classes & Locations.
2. Click the Locations tab.
3. Click Add Location.
4. Enter the location name (e.g., "Downtown Branch", "Chicago Office", "Warehouse 2").
5. Optionally add a description or address for reference.
6. Click Save.

Tagging Transactions

Once class and location tracking are active, every transaction entry form includes optional fields for Class and Location. These appear as dropdowns populated with your configured values.

Journal Entries

When recording a journal entry or a manual transaction, each line item (debit or credit) can be assigned its own class and location. This matters because a single transaction might span multiple segments — for example, a payroll entry where salaries split across the Marketing and Operations departments.

To tag a transaction line:

1. Open Transactions → New Transaction.
2. Add your debit and credit lines as usual.
3. On each line, select the applicable Class and/or Location from the dropdowns.
4. Save the transaction.

Expense Transactions

For purchases and expense entries, tagging the class tells BizBooks Pro which segment incurred the cost. This is what allows the segmented P&L to show accurate expense totals per department or branch rather than lumping everything together.

Applying Classes and Locations to Invoices & Bills

Customer Invoices

Invoices can be tagged at the header level and at the line-item level. Header-level tagging applies one class and location to the entire invoice. Line-item tagging is useful when a single invoice covers services from multiple departments.

To tag an invoice:

1. Navigate to Invoices → Create Invoice (or open an existing draft).
2. In the invoice header, select the Class and/or Location dropdowns if this invoice belongs to a single segment.
3. Alternatively, scroll to the line items and assign a class and location to each individual line.
4. Save or send the invoice as normal.

When the invoice is paid, the payment is recorded against the same class and location automatically. You do not need to re-tag the payment separately.

Vendor Bills

Bills follow the same pattern as invoices. Tag at the header level for simple bills or at the line level when one bill covers costs that belong to different business segments. For example, a utility bill might be split 60% to the Retail branch and 40% to the Warehouse location.

1. Open Vendors → Bills → Enter Bill.
2. Assign the class and location at the header or per line item.
3. Save the bill.

When the bill is paid, the payment inherits the class and location from the bill automatically.

Running Segmented Profit & Loss Reports

The real value of class and location tracking shows up in the reporting module. BizBooks Pro generates a side-by-side Profit & Loss that displays each segment as its own column, so you can compare financial performance across departments or branches at a glance.

How to Generate a Segmented P&L

1. Go to Reports → Profit & Loss.
2. Set your desired date range.
3. In the Group By dropdown, select Class, Location, or Class and Location.
4. Click Run Report.

The report displays a column for each active class or location, plus a Total column on the right. Rows with an "Unassigned" label represent amounts that were not tagged with a class or location.

Filtering the Report

You can narrow the segmented P&L to show only specific segments:

• Single class or location: Select one value in the filter to see only that segment's full income statement.
• Multiple segments: Hold Ctrl (Windows) or Cmd (Mac) and select several values to compare a subset of your segments.
• By sub-class: Expand the parent class row to see revenue and costs broken down within each sub-category.

Exporting Segment Reports

Every segmented report can be exported to PDF or CSV for sharing with department heads, investors, or your accountant. Use Export → PDF to produce a print-ready statement or Export → CSV to load the data into Excel for further analysis.

Best Practices for Class & Location Tracking

Keep the Structure Simple

The most common mistake is creating too many classes. If you have 20 classes, tagging every transaction becomes a chore and compliance drops. Aim for 3–8 classes that map directly to meaningful business questions you want to answer, such as "Which service line is most profitable?" or "Is the new branch covering its costs?"

Define a Tagging Policy Before You Start

Decide upfront which transactions require a class or location tag, and which can be left untagged. A written policy (even a one-page document shared with your bookkeeper) prevents inconsistency that corrupts your segment data over time. For example: "All revenue and direct cost transactions must be tagged. Overhead accounts like rent and insurance are left untagged and reported as shared costs."

Review Unassigned Amounts Regularly

Pull the segmented P&L at the end of each month and check the Unassigned column. A large unassigned balance means transactions are slipping through without tags. Identify the source (which account or team member) and address it before the pattern continues into the next period.

Use Locations for Physical Separations, Classes for Logical Ones

Resist the urge to use classes and locations interchangeably. Locations should represent places or entities that could realistically exist as separate cost centers. Classes should represent types of work or revenue. Keeping this distinction clean makes your reports more intuitive and easier to explain to stakeholders.

Match Your Segment Structure to Your Budget

If you use the Budget Manager in BizBooks Pro, create budget line items that align with your classes and locations. That way you can run a variance report showing actual vs. budgeted performance per segment, which is far more actionable than a company-wide budget comparison.

Archive, Don’t Delete

When a department is closed or a location shuts down, mark it as inactive rather than deleting it. Deleting removes the label from historical transactions and distorts your comparative reports. Inactive classes and locations remain in the database and appear correctly in prior-period reports, but they no longer show up as options when entering new transactions.