I am interested in how various organizations are using attributes, both account & transaction. Maybe you've solved a problem or found an efficiency that I haven't even thought about! Lista B Hightower Director of Finance Nasher Sculpture Center 214-242-5145 [Email Removed]

Lista, I am just now starting to play on paper with the attributes. I think i am going to use them on my projects as a grouping tool for reporting. I have depts, and in each department are specific programs that i differentiate by projects. if i put attributes on the projects identifing the dept they belong to.. i think i can create a P&L by dept, that then breaks down the inforamtion by project. Does that make sense?

1. We don't use attributes on accounts. 2. On projects we use an attribute to indicate the net asset class (unrestricted, temp or perm restricted) 3. On projects we use an attribute to tell us where the project's assets are invested (blended pool, fixed pool, outside manager,etc) 4. On vendors we use an attribute Y/N to tell us if the vendor is one of our general fund monthly allocation vendors. 5. On vendors we use an attribute to tell us which of our four allocation categories the vendor is classified as (beneficiary, Jewish, non-Jewish in Florida, non-Jewish outside Florida.) We run reports by these categories. 6. On invoices we use an attribute to tell is the payment needs to be either Ratified or Approved by our board. We run approval lists and ratification lists for our board meetings based on these attributes. 7. On invoices we use an attribute to indicate if there is a special note that needs to get downloaded into the Word document/cover letter that gets mailed with the check.

We use attributes for LOTS of different things - but I have recently run into quite a few problems with the reporting aspect of it. For example, if you use an attribute that has text fill in -and you try to run a report using a wild card character to see all entries to that attribute, the report doesn't run. So unless you kept a manual log of every text entry you made - you can't get the info to pull into a report. Which essentially makes attributes useless.

We primarily use attributes for projects and find them to be efficient way to narrowly sort them for reporting purposes. Here's a listing of our project attributes: Attribute Type Data Type Table Name Projected Income Currency Projected Expense Currency FUNDING SOURCE Table FUNDING SOURCE Budget Manager Table Budget Manager SIHC Grant? Yes/No Grant Award Date Date Grant Completion Date Date Contract Extension Date Grant Purpose Table House District Text Senate District Text Contract Mgmt. Fee Paid? Yes/No Funding Usage Table Funding Usage Mission Table Mission (Primary) Project Types Table Project Types SIHC Financials? Yes/No Shared Project Mgr. Table Budget Manager Grant Amount Currency Match Amount Currency Active Project? Yes/No Jeff Leber Steel Industry Heritage Corp. [Email Removed]

I am thinking about using attributes in both accounts and transactions. For example, under my Utilities G/L account I am thinking about setting up attributes to make reporting of water, gas and electric expense easier to obtain. I am also considering using attributes for monthly contracted service providers through accounts payable – security, landscaping, etc… Any other uses of attributes other than projects? Hope you can help.

We've found attributes useful for selecting projects to report - for colleges and for departments.  Also have found them useful for selecting projects for other attributes - for example, special tax characteristics.  Great for monthly reports - because then when we add a project we model it after an existing one, with existing attributes, so it has a home.  Have found that periodically (quarterly) we need to examine all projects to ensure they have a home (easiest way is to export an all projects query result to excel, then sort by attributes - any blank ones are evident).  Also, it works best to set your attribute as a drop-down box, not free text - prevents misspelling Opthalmology, for example, since person adding project can only select from drop down choices.

Carlsen Huey

We just started using Transaction Attributes, with a table so it can connect to the A/P. We are using them keep track of employee credit card holders. That way we know who owes us receipts, so record everything properly.

We also have used Vendor Attributes to separate vendors from our different sites (we are branched over three locations/states).