Splitting one cost across several projects
One cheque, several jobs: allocate the amount by percentage, hours or dollars and each job carries its own share.
An employee is paid $1,000 for a week split between two jobs. The payment is one event, but the cost belongs half to each job. Without a split, whichever job gets named carries the whole $1,000 — one job flattered, the other punished, and nothing in the books showing it.
How to do it: on a bill, expense, check, vendor credit or item receipt, open the row menu on a line and choose Split across projects.
Three ways to divide it:
- By percentage — 50/50, 60/40. The odd cents are settled for you.
- By hours — in proportion to the hours worked on each job.
- By amount — type the dollars, with a one-click button to drop the remainder on a row.
The rule that makes it safe: the parts must add back to the whole, exactly, to the cent. A split that does not reconcile is refused rather than rounded, because a rounding difference here is a permanent error in job cost that nothing downstream can catch. The screen shows the shortfall as you type and will not save until it is nil.
It is real, not a report overlay. A split line posts as one journal line per project — same account, same total, different job. Every project report is therefore correct without knowing this feature exists, and the trial balance is untouched.
Saved splits: name a split you use often — the crew that is always 60/40 across the same two jobs — and apply it to any amount later.
Cost codes can be set per part as well as per line, so a split can land on different phases of different jobs. See Cost codes.