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The Object Register

Hansa supports the use of Objects, to allow your accounts to be classified and reported in several different categories or dimensions.

You can assign default Objects to Customers, Items, Suppliers, individual Invoices and Nominal Ledger entries. When an Object is assigned to a Customer, for example, Hansa will assign that Object automatically to all Invoices raised in the name of that Customer and to all Transactions generated by those Invoices. This gives you excellent possibilities to report for example sales per Object. In general, Objects are tools to improve the internal cost accounting capabilities in your business.

Objects may be used as selection criteria in many reports. If, for example, you have several profit centres in your business, and use Objects to separate income and expenditure for each of these, you may produce separate profit and loss statements for each profit centre.

Object Types are a means of grouping similar Objects together. They are defined using the Object Types setting in the Nominal Ledger, but since they are so closely connected with Objects, they will be dealt with together.

Let us look at an example. We will look at the simplest form of a "Contribution": sales income less cost of sales.

In our example we have created a "PRODS" Object Type using the Object Types setting in the Nominal Ledger:

The following Objects belong to the "PRODS" Object Type:

The following illustration shows the definition of one of these Objects, "MACH":

Each Item can then be allocated the appropriate Object. If you sell different groups of products or services, it is easy to set up various groups of Objects in this manner. It is then simple to separate the transactions belonging to different Object or Object Types when producing reports such as profit and loss, key ratios, etc.

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You control the definition and use of Object and Object Types entirely. They are your own tools for your cost accounting.


All Objects in Hansa can span several years. This is a consequence of Hansa's continuous database, where the end of year is simply a user-defined reporting interval. Object balances are thus automatically transferred from one financial year to the next. This gives you the ability to keep track of the budget and results of an Object (e.g. a building project) for several years.

An Object can also be closed, to prevent further use. With the Object on screen in a record window, check the Closed check box to close it. If you want to open the Object again later, you simply click in the box again to remove the check.)

Do try out the Objects, Object Types and the different reports. This is an interesting way to get an insight into the status of the company - and there may be money to gain!

Defining, Inspecting, Changing and Deleting Objects

When you select 'Objects' from the Registers menu in the System module or click the [Objects] button in the Master Control panel, the 'Objects: Browse' window is opened with a list of the currently defined Objects.

This operates in the same manner as all browse windows in Hansa: you can sort the list by clicking on one of the headings, or search using the search box in the top right-hand corner.

Open an Object record by double-clicking one of the items in the list, or create a new Object using the [New] or [Duplicate] buttons in the Button Bar.

Delete an Object by opening it and then selecting 'Delete' from the Record menu. Remember that, as elsewhere in Hansa, deletions are permanent and cannot be reversed by the 'Undo' facility. You will not be able to delete Objects that have been used in Transactions.

Using Objects - an Example

All invoiced sales are recorded with an Object of the "LAND" Object Type (representing their country of origin). The following reports are produced based on the data entered. First, we produce a Profit & Loss report for the "LAND" Object Type:

Similarly, ordering a report for an individual Account (the Nominal Ledger Report) and for one Object will list only Transactions for that Object.

Multiple Objects

Hansa allows you to assign more than one Object to a transaction. An example is when you have assigned a certain group of Objects to Customers, and another group of Objects to Items. Both groups of Objects will be used in Nominal Ledger transactions generated by Invoices for those Items made out to those Customers. With some careful organisation, you may then produce a very detailed and precise analysis of your business for the different combinations. To set up the right combination of Objects is usually quite a difficult analytical exercise, and it is quite easy to create nonsense results.

When entering transactions of any type, up to 30 Objects separated by commas can be assigned separately to the transaction and to each row: each Object field can contain up to 60 characters. However, it is recommended that Object Codes with at least two characters are used, imposing a more usual limit of 20 Objects.