Hi Hugh,

A Financial Statement that we have developed I believe is similar to what you are asking for. Take a look at the image attached. In the yellow highlighted cell the following formula appears :
=-GLAMT(E$7,RNGMERGE($C10,STRCAT("-",D$5)))

=GLAMT(E$7,RNGMERGE($C36,STRCAT("-",D$5))) is used for the expense section

E$7- Is the data that you would like to bring in. In this case it is "Y" for the year to date amount
$C10- Is your GL account number, in this case 4000
D$5- Is the GL department which is, in this case all departments between 200:790

This financial statement is useful to our client who wants to see all of their financial information across many departments in one statement. We have added the comparison to the Budget Year to Date total and what the variance is from their actual amounts to their budget. If you are concerned about seeing just Year to Date/Monthly figures you don't need the second two columns, or you use different codes depending on what information you want to bring in.

The "$" symbol is used so that the financial reporter (or excel, it works the same) knows to always reference that cell. In our financial statement we want all of the values in the E column to use the department found in D5. Without the '$' you could not copy and past the formula down the row. The '$' goes before what value you do not want to change. For the GL account number it is in front of the column reference 'C' because we want the row reference '10' to change based on what row the formula is found in but for it to always look for the GL account number in column C. For the department reference the '$' symbol is in front of the row reference '5' because we always want the formula to look what is found in row 5. When we copy the formula to a different column we want it to pick up a different department. For example for Department 1 we want it to reference K5 and Department 2 R5. I believe this is the answer to your second question.

Also the columns are highlighted blue when they are selected to 'hide when printed'. This is so you can have notes or other information on the financial statements that are useful to those creating the statements but you don't want seen by all those who view printed copies of the statement. For example, those viewing the financial statements might only want to see the account descriptions, but don't care what the actual GL account numbers are. To turn this on or off highlight the row or column, right click on the corresponding letter or number (ie B) and select/deselect 'hide when printed'.

Good Luck,
Lauren