What are dimensions?
Dimensions are tags you can attach to vouchers to categorize transactions across accounts. Catacloud has four types of dimensions:
Department – e.g. Sales, Finance, IT
Project – e.g. a customer project or an internal initiative
Product – e.g. a product line or service
Custom dimensions – dimensions you create and name yourself, which can be structured hierarchically with sub-dimensions
Department and Project are add-on features that must be enabled for the client – if you don't see them as filter options, they are likely not turned on for your client. Product and custom dimensions are always available.
The reporting principle is the same regardless of which dimension you use. This article uses department as the example.
Two ways to report by dimension
You can pull out dimension information in two different ways, depending on what you want to see. Both are available in the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports, and can be used at the same time in those two reports:
Filter – show only transactions tied to one specific dimension value (e.g. only the Sales department)
Expand dimension – break down every account by dimension and see the totals side by side
Method 1: Filter by department
This method is available in the General Ledger, subledger reports (customers/suppliers), Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Trial Balance. It shows only the transactions tagged with a specific department.
Go to Accounting → Reports and open the report you want (e.g. General Ledger).
Click Filters at the top of the report.
Find the Department field and select the desired department from the dropdown.
Click Apply filters. The report now shows only transactions tied to the selected department.
Tip for searching projects: The search in the project filter finds projects whose name starts with what you type. So type the beginning of the project name – e.g. "Project Oslo", not "Oslo". Searching by project number or by a word in the middle of the name gives no results. You can also leave the search field empty and scroll to the project in the list.
Tip – every posting with its project in Excel: To see each individual posting with its project for a group of accounts, for example accounts 5000–5999, open the General Ledger, click Filters and enter the accounts in Account range. Then click Export and choose Download .xlsx (Excel). The Excel file has a separate project column on every line, so you can sort or build a pivot table per project.
You can combine dimension filters with other filters, such as date and account, to narrow the result further. In Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet, you can also combine the filter with expand-dimension (method 2) at the same time – for example, filter to one department while expanding by project.
Method 2: Expand dimension in the Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports
This method gives you a combined overview of all departments at once, and is only available in Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet (not in Trial Balance). Each department gets its own column, so you can compare across them.
Go to Accounting → Reports and open Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet.
Click Report options at the top of the report.
Find the Expand dimension option and select Department from the dropdown.
The report is rebuilt so each account is shown with one column per department, plus a total column.
This view makes it easy to see which departments contribute to revenue and costs – without having to run separate reports.
For custom dimensions with sub-dimensions: Expand dimension only shows the top-level dimensions as separate columns. If you want figures broken down by a sub-dimension, use Filter (method 1) on that specific sub-dimension instead.
Exporting the report
Both methods support export. Click the Export button (usually top right of the report) and choose the desired format, e.g. Excel or PDF. The export keeps the same selection and the same dimension view you have set up.
Applies to all dimensions
Everything described above applies the same way to Project, Product, and custom dimensions – just select that dimension instead of Department in the filter or in Report options. Two exceptions to note:
Department and Project only appear as options if these features are enabled for the client (Project requires the project module to be in use).
Custom dimensions can have a hierarchical structure with sub-dimensions. Expand dimension only breaks down the top level – sub-dimensions can be filtered on, but not expanded into their own columns.