For hands-on instruction on designing financial statements, see Article ID 47663: "Designing financial statements" in the Related Resources section.

Note: If you use Sage 50 First Accounting, you will not be able to edit any of the predefined financial statements. Customizing forms and statements is not an included feature of Sage 50 First Accounting. If you would like to be able to design forms and financial statements please contact us at 800-554-8900 to upgrade to a version that does have these features.

Section I: Creating General Ledger department accounts

• Sage 50 allows a great deal of flexibility in the way you create IDs, or department codes, for records. The coding system you use is up to you. However, it is important that you create a consistent, logical method that everyone in your office understands, especially when you are creating your Chart of Accounts for use in designing Departmentalized Financial Statements.
• You will need to create a code for each department. You can use letters or numbers for this code. For example, if you have Construction and Retail departments in your company, you might use C and R for Construction and Retail, respectively. You might use CON and RET, or 01 and 02 just as easily.
• You will then create General Ledger accounts that contain the department code. It is essential to have the department code at the end of the account ID. For example:
  • 40000-C Sales-Construction
  • 40000-R Sales-Retail
• Typically, for use with rollup financial statements (using the rollup feature), you could also have a master account such as:
  • 40000-0 Sales
  • You will not be able to use the following characters in General Ledger Account IDs:
  • Asterisks (*), plus signs (+), question marks (?)
  • Leading or trailing spaces
• In addition to the steps below, Sage 50 provides a Financial Statement Wizard that can assist you in creating custom financial statements. For more information, go to Help on the main Sage 50 menu and click Help. Go to the Index tab, and type Financial Statement Wizard.

1. Select Reports & Forms from the main menu, then select Financial Statements. Click once on the report that you would like to modify and click Design. For our example, we will begin with the Income Stmnt.
2. The Financial Statement Design screen will display. In the Financial Statement Designer, you will be entering the Department Mask in the Column Description properties, so that a column you specify will pull the information only for one department.
3. Right-click the rectangular button along the left side of the screen labeled Column Desc . Left-click Properties from the shortcut menu that appears.
4. The Column Description properties window will display. The Column Definitions table lists the column numbers, the types of information in your financial statement and the title for each column.
5. Click the line for Column 2, with contents Activity, so that the row has a red line surrounding it. On the right you will see attributes of this column.
6. Click in the Dept. Mask field in the upper-right part of the window.
7. Type in an asterisk for each non-departmental character of the General Ledger Account ID and then the department code you want to display for this financial statement at the end. For example, since your sample company has account numbers with 5 digits, a dash and the department code, you would type *****-C to mask for Construction, or *****-R to mask for Retail.
8. Click row 4, with the contents Year to Date. Enter the same department mask you entered for Column 2. In this example, *****-C for Construction or *****-R for Retail.
9. Click OK.
10. To save the new financial statement design, select the Save button in the design window. Enter a new name (i.e., Department C Income Statement) and click OK.

Note: Do not include the phrase in your new report name or your report will not save.
To test the report, click the Preview button at the top of the screen. The report will display data for the accounts that fit into the department mask that you have specified. In the example here, accounts that end in the letter C (for Construction Department) will be shown.

Section III: Designing a rollup financial statement Line Descriptions are modified instead of Column Descriptions when creating Rollup Financial Statements.

1. Select Reports & Forms from the main menu, then select Financial Statements . Click once on the report that you would like to modify and click the Design button near the top of the screen. For our example, we will begin with the Income Statement.
2. The Financial Statement Design screen will display.
3. Locate the Line Description button that corresponds to the section of your Income Statement that you want to rollup (in our example we are going to modify the Income section). Right-click the Line Description button you have selected. For example, if you are rolling up the Sales accounts into one line, right-click the Line Description button in the Revenue section of the Income Statement.
4. From the menu that displays, select Properties with the left mouse button.
5. The Line Description screen will display. In the lower right, locate the field labeled Print.
6. When you click the drop-down arrow to the right of the Print box, it appears that there are only two options. Scroll down, and select Rollup.
7. The field directly below the print field will now read Rollup Mask . Place your cursor in this field.
   • The Rollup Mask works in the opposite way than the Department Mask. First, type the leading digit(s) that represent the account group you are rolling up (income accounts for example) and type zeros for the rest of the digits (as place holders) until you get to the department code. Then type asterisks for the department code .
   • For example: You are interested in rolling up income accounts for all departments. Your income accounts begin with the number 4 and there are a total of 5 digits in each regular General Ledger account number. The department code consists of a dash and one character as the last digit. If you create a Rollup Mask using this criteria the rollup mask would be 40000**.
   • Note: If you want to rollup only the Department Masked accounts your Rollup Masking would be 40000-*. This will print the 40000 accounts on one line and all department masked accounts on another line.
8. Click OK.
9. Save the rollup Financial Statement as a new report. Select the Save button at the top left. Give the report a new name, such as Rollup Income Statement or a name that reflects the content of the report and Click OK.

Note: Be sure to not include the phrase in your new report name. When the Rollup Mask has been used properly, the report will display the total of the departmental accounts specified with the description of the Master account. In our example, the report displays the total of the activity from accounts 40000, 40000-R, and 40000-C and it is labeled Sales, which is the description of account 40000.

All accounts that start with a 4, and have a department code, will be rolled up into their respective master accounts. Any account that does not have a department code will be printed on its own line. You can rollup account activity in any section of the Financial Statement you are customizing. For example, if you rollup accounts in the Cost of Goods Sold or Expenses sections, you would go back to the design screen and modify the corresponding Line Descriptions for those sections. The only difference would be that the leading digit on the Rollup Mask would reflect the same leading digit for Cost of Sales type accounts or Expense type accounts.