Available in Sage 50 Premium Accounting and higher.

Setting Up a Job ID with Phases and Cost Codes

If you need to monitor costs incurred during a phase within a job, you can define categories called cost codes that will group similar costs together. These cost codes are then available for using with any phase. Although you can use the existing cost types with a phase without using a cost code, you will find it easier to use just cost codes. This happens because if you specify using cost types, all five cost types are available at once for each phase, and you may not need to track each cost type for each phase.

Suppose you are a Graphic Design company. You divided your job phases into Typesetting, Photography, Copywriting, and Printing and decided to use cost types with your phases. You will be creating categories for:

• Typesetting: Labor, Materials, Subcontractor, Equipment, and Other (5 categories for Phase 01)
• Photography: Labor, Materials, Subcontractor, Equipment, and Other (5 categories for Phase 02)
• Copywriting: Labor, Materials, Subcontractor, Equipment, and Other (5 categories for Phase 03), and so on.

This way, your reports would include the following fields:

Phase and Cost Type	Expense	Income
Typesetting Labor	$ 000.00	$ 000.00
Typesetting Materials	$ 000.00	$ 000.00
Typesetting Subcontractor	$ 000.00	$ 000.00
Typesetting Equipment	$ 000.00	$ 000.00
Typesetting Other	$ 000.00	$ 000.00
Photography Labor	$ 000.00	$ 000.00
And so on for all cost types in all phases...

In a simple scenario like the one above, you would be tracking 15 categories (3 phases multiplied by 5 cost types), and you may get overwhelmed with information if you do not need so much detail.

In that case, if you don't need all the cost types for each phase, you can define cost codes such that they imitate cost types. Since one job phase uses only one cost code, you can assign the relevant cost code to each phase and avoid adding unnecessary categories. So, you could assign cost codes in a Graphic Design project as follows:

• Typesetting:Cost Code: Subcontractor (1 category)
• Photography:Cost Codes: Labor and Photography: Materials (2 categories)
• Copywriting:Cost Code: Labor (1 category)
• Printing:Cost Codes: Material and Labor (2 categories)

However, you may sometimes need to use cost types and cost codes because your project may involve numerous costs within each phase. For such projects, you should take full advantage of setting up job IDs with phases, cost types, and cost codes.