Departments

By using departments, you can track the profitability of different segments of your business. The profitability for each department is displayed on the income statement. The department number is also included in general-ledger account numbers to show which departments transactions posted to.

If you use multiple departments, you need to set them up in one of the following ways:

By customer types, such as wholesale and retail (See Customer Method.)
By types of inventory items and services sold (See Inventory Method.)

With multiple departments, you need to assign departments to several program settings and you need to select which department various transactions should post to. For some transactions, such as manual journal entries, you can only change the department when the transaction posts to an income or expense account. Only income and expense accounts are used for the income statement.