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Dimensions & Custom Fields

Plan availability: dimensions and custom fields depend on your subscription. If you don't see Dimensions or Custom Fields under Settings, your plan may not include them — see Subscriptions & billing, or ask your workspace owner.

Dimensions and Custom Fields let you capture and report on information the standard fields don't cover — a department, a cost centre, a region, a branch, or any business-specific attribute. Dimensions are for slicing your numbers in reports; custom fields are for storing extra data on records.

When to use which

  • Use a Dimension when you want to ask "how much did we spend / earn by X?" — by department, by branch, by cost centre. Dimensions tag transaction lines and feed dedicated reports.
  • Use a Custom Field when you just need to store something on a record — a customer's account manager, a supplier's registration number, an internal reference on invoices. Custom fields appear on forms and can be printed on documents, but they don't have their own reports.
  • If you want to track jobs with budgets, time, and profitability, use Projects instead of a "Project" dimension — projects are a full feature, not just a tag.

Set up dimensions

A dimension is a tag you attach to transaction lines so you can slice reports by it.

  1. Open Settings → Dimensions (Accounting & Tax section).
  2. Create a new dimension — for example "Department".
  3. Add the dimension's values — for example Sales, Operations, Admin.
  4. Save. The dimension is now available on transaction lines.

You can create more than one dimension (say, "Department" and "Region") and tag the same line with a value from each.

Tag transactions

On an invoice, bill, expense, or journal entry line, pick a value for each dimension you want to track. A few practical points:

  • Tagging is per line, not per document — one bill can split its lines across departments.
  • Untagged lines simply don't appear under any dimension value in the reports; if you rely on dimension reporting, make tagging a habit (or a team rule) from day one.
  • Dimensions are analytic only — they never change which accounts a line posts to.

Report by dimension

Once lines are tagged, three reports break your numbers down by your tags:

  • P&L by Dimension (Business Overview group) — a profit-and-loss statement split by dimension value, so you can see each department's or branch's result side by side.
  • Expenses by Dimension — spending broken down by tag.
  • Revenue by Dimension — income broken down by tag.

All reports export to Excel like every other report — see Reports.

Set up custom fields

A custom field adds an extra data field to a record type — customers, suppliers, items, or documents.

  1. Open Settings → Custom Fields (Accounting & Tax section).
  2. Choose the record type you want to extend.
  3. Add a field: name, type (text, number, date, dropdown), and whether it is required.
  4. Save. The field appears on that record type's create and edit forms and can be shown in lists.

In the PDF template editor, custom fields are available as draggable variables, so you can print them on invoices and other documents.

Example

Al Noor Trading has two branches. Sara creates a "Branch" dimension with values Amman and Irbid, and asks the team to tag every invoice and expense line with the branch it belongs to. At month end she opens P&L by Dimension: Amman shows JOD 12,000 revenue against JOD 7,500 costs; Irbid shows JOD 5,000 against JOD 6,200 — Irbid is losing money, and now she knows exactly where to look.

Common problems

  • A dimension doesn't appear on document lines. It may be inactive, or your plan doesn't include dimensions. Check Settings → Dimensions, or ask your workspace administrator.
  • The dimension report looks incomplete. Only tagged lines are counted. Lines saved before the dimension existed, or saved without a value, won't appear — edit draft documents to add tags; posted documents keep their original tagging.
  • A required custom field is blocking saves. Someone marked the field as required under Settings → Custom Fields. Either fill it in or ask an administrator to make it optional.

Behaviour and rules

  • Dimensions are analytic only — they never change the accounts a line posts to; they only tag it for reporting.
  • Custom fields are descriptive — they store data but do not drive postings.
  • No retroactive tagging of posted documents. Posted documents' accounting fields are locked; plan your dimensions before the period starts if you can.

Related

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