Why do I have zero general and administration (G&A) expenses?

Three sources exist for your G&A expenses: G&A personnel (i.e., payroll), overhead expenses related to maintaining other employees, and Other Expenses that are allocated to G&A. The only way for the income statement to show zero expenses is for all of these components to be zero. Let's talk about them separately:

- G&A Personnel. On the menu, select assumptions/costs/personnel. Then select the Employees tab. Here are some issues that could cause zero G&A personnel expense:

  1. You have no G&A employees. Examine the Salary Charged To column entries on this page. Having no employees with their Salary Charged To G&A would explain why you have no G&A expenses.
  2. You have G&A employees, but they earn zero salaries. Make sure you enter non-zero values in the Initial Base Salary column for the G&A employees listed.
  3. You have an G&A category of employee, but a zero count. Make sure you enter non-zero values in the Employee Count columns for these G&A employees.
  4. You have G&A employees and a base salary, but you are not planning on paying them. This is also acceptable if that is your plan. It would be reflected as a Percentage Paid of 0% in the Advanced Settings page for each of the G&A employees.
  5. You have G&A employees and a base salary, but they are not working. This makes no sense. Make sure that the Percent Time Worked column on the Advanced Settings page for each of the G&A employees is not set to 0%.
  6. You have G&A employees and a base salary, but their time is being charged to COGS, not G&A. This is also acceptable if that is your plan; it occurs in those industries in which contract labor is charged to COGS and employees who are normally G&A happen to be working on said contracts. It would be reflected as a less-than-100% Expense Percentage in the Advanced Settings page for the G&A employees.

- Overhead Labor Expenses. Two possibilities exist here that could cause zero expenses to propagate to the G&A line of the income statement: (i) having no employees at all in the company [On the menu, select assumptions/costs/personnel. Select the Employees tab. Verify that you have employees and they are being paid – see above], or (ii) having zero payroll taxes (which is illegal) [On the menu, select assumptions/costs/personnel. Select the Payroll tab. Verify that you have non-zero entries for the three fringe and tax rates].

- G&A Expenses. On the menu, select assumptions/costs/other expenses. Scan down the column labeled Calculation Rule. Make sure that some of the non-zero expenses are being allocated to either Billed to G&A, Per G&A Employee, or Per Employee. Otherwise, this expense will not appear on the G&A line of the income statement.

Related Questions:

Why do I have zero expenses?

How do I change the department or division I charge an employee salary to?

How do I change the number of employees?

How do I change the salary of an employee?

How do I suppress a line of all zeros from a report?


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