An income statement and balance sheet per branch
Once you have more than one branch, the important question is not “what did the company make” — it is “which one earned it and which one is being carried”. Most companies answer that by feel: sales are known per branch, but expenses all land in one pile. The result is a year spent running a loss-making branch while believing it is profitable, because the good branch's profit covers it.
The idea in a minute
The part that gets forgotten is the second one. An expense recorded with no branch counts for the company but not for any branch — so every branch's profit comes out higher than it really is.
How it works
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1. The branch is recorded on the entry itself
Every accounting movement in Zemam carries the branch it belongs to at the line level, not just on the document. Invoices, purchases and expenses raised from their own screens take their branch from the context of the work, so the reports are built from real data rather than an estimated allocation at year end.
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2. A manual entry asks you for the branch
The riskiest entries are the manual ones — adjustments and corrections. If an entry correcting a branch's expense is recorded with no branch, the correction counts for the company while the branch keeps the wrong figure. That is why the manual journal form asks for the branch explicitly.
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3. And there is an explicit “company-wide” choice
Not every expense belongs to a branch. Head-office rent, back-office salaries, company-wide bank charges — those are company costs. So instead of leaving the field empty and letting the system guess, you choose “company-wide” explicitly. The difference is that the decision is deliberate and documented rather than an omission.
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4. It does not ask when there is nothing to ask
If your company has one branch, the system stamps it itself and does not waste your time on a question with one answer. The question appears only when there is a real choice — which keeps people actually answering it instead of learning to click past it.
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5. The reports toggle: combined or by branch
The income statement, balance sheet and trial balance each carry a toggle from “combined” to “by branch”. In branch mode you get a table with a column per branch side by side plus a total column — so you compare line by line: each branch's revenue, its cost of sales, its gross profit, its expenses and its bottom line.
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6. And an “unassigned” column tells you the truth
Anything recorded with no branch appears in an “unassigned” column — it is neither spread across the branches by guesswork nor quietly dropped. It is the most important column in the table: if it is large, your branch numbers are incomplete and you know by exactly how much. No report claims a precision it does not have.
In short
The branch is recorded on the journal line itself, manual entries and adjustments included.
An income statement, balance sheet and trial balance with a column per branch, side by side.
An “unassigned” column shows what has no branch, instead of spreading it by guesswork.
“Company-wide” is an explicit choice, so head-office costs are never charged to a branch by accident.
Decisions this changes
Whether to close a branch
A big decision that should not be made on instinct. An income statement for the branch shows whether it is really losing money, or covering its own costs and contributing to head office.
Branch manager incentives
If you judge a branch manager on a number, that number had better be fair. A report showing their branch's revenue and its own tagged costs makes the basis clear to both sides.
Where your next money goes
Expand a branch or open a new one? The one with the better margin deserves the investment — and it is not always the one with the highest sales.
Reviewing expenses
When one branch's expense line is far above the same line at a comparable branch, you have a specific question to ask instead of a general review.
Related reading
Several branches and one income statement?
Talk to us and we'll show you the income statement with a column per branch on your own data — and which one actually earns.