Overview: Trading accounts allow users to separate profit and loss items into distinct reporting sections, particularly useful for sales trading and livestock trading. Each trading account is configured on a per-entity file basis. This article outlines the steps to create and manage trading accounts and how they can assist with reporting.

Please refer to the Glossary for definitions of key terms used in this article.

Overview

There are three steps in the process of creating a trading account report:

A sample of a trading account report layout is as follows.

Creating a trading account classification

To create a new trading account, navigate to the Trading Accounts section from the File Settings menu from any screen within the client file.

You will be directed to a screen with a list of all available trading accounts. To create a new one, select +New Trading Account.

Provide the following details:

Code and Name: To identify the trading account.
Profit and Loss Location: Choose from Income, Other Income, or None. This determines where the summary appears on the profit and loss statement.
Page Title (Optional): Specify an alternative title for the trading account page in a report. If left blank, by default, it will use the trading account name.
Primary Production Checkbox (Optional): Select if the account pertains to primary production. If checked, an additional checkbox will appear to indicate whether it is a Livestock account.

Finally, click the Add Trading Account button in order to add the trading account to the client file.

Note: Nominating a trading account as 'Livestock' will allow you to use the primary production calculator for that particular trading account. For more information, see the knowledge article: How to use the primary production tool in datasets.

You will now see it appear in the list.

Allocating an account to a trading account classification

To allocate an account to a trading account, navigate to the Accounts screen and edit an account by selecting the edit icon to the right of the relevant account.

On the account edit screen, select the required trading account from the drop-down list.

There are two options, you can either select the default behaviour of the whole Active Ledger account or select the behaviour of a single source account. This is useful for sub-accounts or linked accounts that may have different properties.

Note: If the account is an opening balance account, be sure to select the 'Opening Balance Account' checkbox when editing the account details. For more information on opening balance accounts, see the support article: How to import and edit opening balances.

Note: An account can be added to both a division and a trading account. For more information on divisions, see the knowledge article: Accounts - Divisions. This allows you the most flexibility when reporting.

After editing the account, select the Save Account button. The account has now been allocated to that trading account for the purpose of reporting.

Divisional and trading account view

To allocate multiple accounts to divisions quickly you can use the 'Divisional and Trading Accounts' view in the Accounts screen. For more information, see the knowledge article: Accounts - overview.

Producing a report with trading account report settings

To produce a report that separates trading accounts page by page, refer to the 'Generating a livestock report' section of the knowledge article: Datasets - other info - primary production.

Further, to produce a summary page for all trading accounts, refer to the 'Generating a livestock summary report' section of the knowledge article: Datasets - other info - primary production.

For more information relating to general report settings, see the knowledge article: Reporting - Creating a Report.

Divisions vs Trading accounts

You can also use trading accounts in a similar way.

For a comparison between the two, refer to the table below. See the knowledge article: Accounts - Divisions for more information.

Feature	Divisions	Trading accounts
Tag Accounts	✓	✓
Tag Transactions	✓
Filter Report Columns	✓	✓
Separate Profit and Loss Pages	✓	✓
Primary Production		✓