Reports by department, project, or any dimension

ERPClaw can split your numbers by department, project, cost center, location, fund, or any label you define. The trick is two steps: tag an entry when you book it, then ask for the report.

“Show me this month’s P&L broken down by department.”

That is all it takes once your entries are tagged. For the shorter overview of what this answers, see dimensional reporting.

Tag entries when you book them

When a posting belongs to a department or a project, say so at the time you book it.

“Book 120 dollars of office supplies against Engineering.”

The same tagging works when you raise an invoice or record a payment. That tag is what makes the entry show up under the right heading later. You do not add a “cost center” column or keep the attribution in a spreadsheet on the side; the tag travels with the posting for good.

Ask for P&L by a dimension

Once entries are tagged, ask for the breakdown.

“Profit and loss for June, grouped by department.”

You get revenue, expenses, and net for each department, across your income and expense accounts. Ask without the grouping and you get the single company-wide profit and loss exactly as before. You group by one dimension at a time, so pick the lens you want for this report: department, project, or whichever you defined.

The (untagged) bucket

Anything that is not tagged with the dimension you asked for is never dropped from the report. It lands in an explicit (untagged) bucket of its own. That means the parts always add back up to the company total, and you can see at a glance how much is still unattributed and worth going back to tag.

Define your own dimensions

Out of the box you can tag by project, department, and cost center. Add the ones your business actually runs on, like region, fund, campaign, or store.

“Add a region dimension, and label it Sales region.”

“We do not split by region any more, retire it.”

Retiring one is blocked while recent entries still reference it, so you cannot orphan live data by accident. And if you ask to group by a dimension that was never registered, or one you have already retired, ERPClaw stops and tells you which dimensions exist instead of handing you a confusing empty split.

Beyond the P&L

Profit and loss is the common ask, but the same tags drive more.

• “Break the trial balance out by project and department” gives you the two-dimension version across the whole trial balance.
• “Show me balances by project” gives one dimension’s balances on their own.
• The trial balance, balance sheet, cash flow statement, and general ledger can all be narrowed to a single department or project. On profit and loss the filter applies first and the grouping happens after, so you can scope to one project and still split it by department.

What is next

• Import a bank statement matches a statement file to your open invoices and payments.
• Accounting basics covers the chart of accounts, journals, and how postings flow.
• Purchasing walks the purchase order, receipt, vendor invoice, and payment loop.

Reference: the actions behind this page

You never have to type these. They are what ERPClaw runs when you ask, and they are here for anyone calling the API or MCP surface directly, or reading a log.

add-journal-entry posting_date=2026-06-12 entries='[
  {"account": "Office Supplies", "debit": 120.00},
  {"account": "Cash", "credit": 120.00}
]' --dimension-key department --dimension-value Engineering
profit-and-loss --group-by department --from-date 2026-06-01 --to-date 2026-06-30
multi-dim-trial-balance --group-by "project,department"
dimension-balance-report --dimension project
add-dimension --name region
list-dimensions
update-dimension --name region --label "Sales region"
deactivate-dimension --name region

trial-balance, balance-sheet, cash-flow, and general-ledger all accept --dimension-key and --dimension-value filters. The same --dimension-key and --dimension-value pair works on invoices and payments, not just journal entries.