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Many accountants working at remote projects are pretty satisfied by just having a grouped accounts plan and nothing else.  Others are used to having a 'Department' or a 'Project' dimension in addition.  Actually 'dimensions' are a matter of IF or HOW you need to filter your transactions in reports.  Let me take an example:

 

Say you start a car hiring company.  You invest in buildings, you purchase inventory and hire staff.  Finally you invest by purchasing different car types for hire.   And when everything is running you start to receive income for your investments.  But you still have maintenance expenses for both buildings and cars.  All types of expenses and incomes mentioned above fits nicely into a mainbook accounts plan.  So at this point you may not need any further dimensions.

 

However, you offer your cleints a full range of car types to hire:  Sedans, trucks, motorhomes, sports cars, SUVs and vans.  The big trucks need a much bigger garage for maintenance, parking and cleaning than the sedans.  But your basic mainbook accounting only gives to the expenses and incomes for ALL your car types.  So you don't know anything about incomes or expenses for each car type.

 

So you decide to add a 'Car type' dimension.  You add Sedans, Trucks, Motorhomes, Sports cars, SUVs and Vans to this dimension.  So when registering vouchers your accountant 'tags' every expense / income with their correct 'Car type'.  So from now you can for example generate a Result report for Trucks only (which ONLY calculates expenses and incomes related to this car type) so you can see how your investment pays off as for the Truck type car.

 

Later you may want to know more about fuel types, and you add 'Fuel' as a new dimension:  Petrol, Diesel, Hydrogen, Electricity.  Now all your expenses and incomes are tagged with the type of Fuel too.  And you can print a result report telling you if Electrical trucks really was worth the investment.

 

When you expand your company to other cities you can add a Department or Site dimension, enabling you to see the profit or loss for any location.

 

THIS is what 'Dimensions' can do for you.  However, always remember to not request more dimensions than you actually need.  Most accountings WE deal with will be fine with only a 'Project' or a 'Site' dimension (or both).  If your accounts will be imported into huge fundraising accountings you will need to discuss with them which dimensions you need in your accounts.  

 

Quick example from traditional accounting plan:

Four transactions using accounts only (one extra account for each dept and project combination):

6200 Office expenses, purchasing department

6210 Office expenses, production department Sedan project

6211 Office expenses, production department Truck project

6203 Office expenses, sales department Sedan project

 

Same example from dimensional accounting:

Accounts:

6200 Office expenses (only ONE account!)

 

Department (1st dimension):

10 Purchasing

11 Production

12 Sales

 

Project (2nd Dimension):

100 Sedan

110 Truck

 

The same four transactions using dimensions:

Account        Dept                Project

6200                10

6200                11                100

6200                11                110

6200                12                100

 

The latter example gives the accountants full freedom to create report including or excluding any combinations of the different dimensions!