Why the Customer Accounting Report and the Work Order Print Report show different totals
The Customer Accounting Report by WO Close Date and the Work Order Print report on the same work orders, so it is reasonable to expect their totals to agree. They often do not, and in most cases that is by design rather than an error. The two reports are built for different purposes, and they treat overhead and warranty differently.
Which report to use
Report | Use it for |
|---|---|
Customer Accounting Report by WO Close Date and Customer Accounting Report by Transaction Date | Billing and accounting totals. Costs are grouped by customer and rolled up into accounting categories. |
Line level work detail. Each work order line is listed with its hours or quantity, unit cost, and subtotal. |
For an amount you are going to bill or hand to accounting, use the Customer Accounting Report. To review what was actually done on a work order, use the Work Order Print Report.
Why the totals differ
Overhead is calculated over different categories
The Shop total on the Work Order Print Report is the work order overhead total, which is built from the overhead percentages for labor, parts, tires, and miscellaneous. The OVERHEAD column on the Customer Accounting Report contains labor overhead only. On a work order that carries parts, tire, or miscellaneous cost, the Work Order Print Report will therefore show a larger overhead figure than the Customer Accounting Report, and neither number is wrong.
Warranty is presented differently
The Work Order Print Report lists warranty postings as their own detail lines, labeled WARRANTY LABOR, WARRANTY PARTS and WARRANTY TIRES, and shows a Warranty subtotal. The Customer Accounting Report has no warranty column: warranty labor is added into its LABOR column and warranty parts into its PARTS column. The same warranty amount is itemized in one report and absorbed into the category totals in the other.
The category columns do not line up one to one
Two more differences in how the Customer Accounting Report groups costs are worth knowing before you compare a column to a column:
Customer Accounting Report column | What it contains |
|---|---|
TIRES | Tire cost plus outside tire cost. |
OUTSIDE | Outside labor plus outside parts. Outside tires are in the TIRES column, not here. |
LABOR | Labor plus warranty labor. |
PARTS | Parts plus warranty parts. |
OVERHEAD | Labor overhead. |
TOTAL | Parts, tires, labor, outside, overhead, taxes and miscellaneous. The DAMAGE column is reported separately and is not added into TOTAL. |
The two reports can be run over different date bases
The Customer Accounting Report comes in two versions. Customer Accounting Report by WO Close Date selects work orders by the date the work order closed, and Customer Accounting Report by Transaction Date selects by transaction date. A work order closed in one period with transactions posted in another appears in different runs of the two versions. Confirm both reports cover the same work orders before comparing totals.
Before treating a difference as an error, check that both reports were run for the same facility, the same date range, and the same set of work orders, and that the Customer Accounting Report parameters TotalsOnly and Summary are not both set to True. Running both as True can produce inconsistent output.
When a difference is not expected
The differences above explain category level and total level gaps between the two reports. They do not explain a difference of a few cents on the same category, or a total that does not equal the sum of its own columns within a single report. If you see that, collect the work order number, the facility, the date range used, and a copy of both reports, and contact support@rtafleet.com.