Branch Dimension

Head office pays the meat supplier for all three branches in one payment. Which branch's food cost is it? Without a branch dimension the answer lives in a spreadsheet next to the accounting system; with it, the answer is on the voucher line.

What changes when it's on#

• Every ledger line already carries the branch of its voucher. With the branch dimension enabled, a voucher line may name a different "for branch" — the head-office payment above becomes three lines, each attributed to the branch that consumed it.
• When a voucher's lines span branches, the system automatically appends inter-branch due-from/due-to entries, so each branch's books balance on their own. Branch A paid for Branch B → A holds a receivable from B, B a payable to A, created for you.
• Reports can slice by line-level branch: a real per-branch profit and loss, including shared costs paid centrally.

What it's for#

• Branch profitability you can trust — shared purchases, central salaries and head-office expenses land on the branches that consume them, not wherever the payment happened to be entered.
• Inter-branch settlement — the due-from/due-to balances show at any time what branches owe each other, and settle like any other account.

Before you enable it#

• Decide your attribution policy first: which shared costs get split, and how. The feature records attribution; the policy is yours.
• Voucher entry gains a per-line branch choice — brief your accounting team, and leave the default (the voucher's own branch) alone for normal entries.
• As always: period boundary, accountant aware.

Frequently asked questions#

Do existing vouchers change? No. History is untouched; attribution starts with vouchers entered after enabling.

What if a line isn't given a "for branch"? It stays attributed to the voucher's branch — the behaviour you had before, which remains correct for the vast majority of entries.

Is this cost centres? It's the branch-shaped version of them. If you also use cost centres, the two coexist: cost centres answer "what kind of spend", the branch dimension answers "whose spend".