Classes, locations, and dimensions
How to slice the same accounts by department, site, project, or fund without multiplying the chart of accounts — and how to keep the data complete enough to be usable.
How-toFor Bookkeepers, Business owners, Firm staff
Why dimensions instead of more accounts
A chart of accounts answers what was spent. Dimensions answer where, for whom, and on what. Keeping those questions separate is what stops a chart of accounts from growing to five hundred lines.
One rent account tagged with three locations gives you rent by location and total rent. Three separate rent accounts give you the same information and a Profit & Loss that is a third longer, plus a coding decision that will eventually be made inconsistently.
Setting them up
- 1
Decide what you will actually report on.
Each dimension you add is a field someone must fill in on every transaction, forever. Two well-used dimensions beat five half-filled ones.
- 2
Create the values in Settings › Classes & Locations.
Name them the way the business talks about them, not the way the org chart is drawn.
- 3
Decide which accounts require which dimensions.
Requiring a class on every expense account is usually right. Requiring one on cash accounts usually is not.
- 4
Backfill if you need comparatives.
Reclassifying entries to add dimension values is legitimate work, but do it deliberately for a defined period rather than opportunistically.
Using them in reports
- Profit & Loss can be filtered to a single dimension value, or run comparatively across values.
- Budgets can be set per dimension, so a department's budget-versus-actual is a real comparison rather than an allocation guess.
- The general ledger and account registers can be filtered by dimension when tracing a balance.
- Dimension values travel on journal entry lines individually — one entry can split a cost across several departments.
Common questions
Mechanically they are the same kind of tag; the difference is what you use them for. Locations are usually physical — sites, stores, regions. Classes are usually functional — departments, programs, product lines, funds. Using both gives you a two-axis view of the same costs.
Yes, with a journal entry that credits the pooled cost and debits each dimension its share. Recurring journals are the natural home for a monthly allocation so the method stays consistent.
See alsoRecurring journal entries
If it files its own tax return and holds its own bank account, it is an entity. If it is a way of looking at one business, it is a dimension. Splitting a single company into multiple entities to get departmental reporting creates intercompany work you do not need.
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